Google algo moves away from links, towards traffic patterns

[travisk]

Does anyone else think that Google's actions over the last few years indicate a gradual change in the importance of traffic patterns over inbound links?

Think about it... the Google Toolbar, Google Analytics and click monitoring on the SERPs give Google an incredible picture of where people are going, what pages they stay on, what sites they frequently return to and where they go when they leave.

We know that Google is pushing the toolbar onto consumers. They're paying Dell a billion dollars to install it onto 100 million consumer PC's. Imagine what the behavior patterns of 100 million Internet users could tell Google about a particular site's value.

What scares me is that this will push the blackhats from link spamming over to the busy spyware world. Imagine if I could pay some shady company to have the web browsers of 100,000 pc's randomly click on my #10 ranked link and stay on my site until Google decides that I should be #1. Who cares if these users buy anything on my site. I just want Google to THINK that they're using it. Will Google start bundling anti-spyware with the toolbar to stop this?

Am I on to something, or has this been going on for years?

[edited by: tedster at 8:38 pm (utc) on April 6, 2006]

[Ams24]

If we take a look to those slipped slide notes from the Google presentation, we find:

"Leverage implicit and explicit user feedback to improve popular and nav queries"

What do you think they mean with "Implicit user feedback" else than their clickstream analysis?

[treeline]

Instead of basing ranking on traffic, imagine them using it in a different manner. They'll keep as primary elements what has brought them so far, so linking and other relevancy factors will remain. Now they can start at the sites with the most links and work down, saying "OK, you've got 600,000 links and no visitors. Something smells rotten..."

If you deserved a zillion links, you'll have a bunch of traffic following them. If the links are all on your (& friends) sites, or hidden, the traffic won't be there and you'll stand out like a sore thumb waiting to get whacked by the algo.

Instead of basing everything on traffic, think of it like a pesky little sister ratting you out to mom....

[rohitj]

i'm sure they already use some of that data to some extent--but I would argue that this only helps in extreme cases. In many industries, its easy to get links which don't convert to traffic very easily. Think about how easy it is to get on a news feed, RSS, or some other form of syndication.

Second, it requires a ton of computing power to easily keep track and store this in a database. If the people who have google toolbar surfs for an average of 35 minutes a day--just imagine how many billions of pieces of data that'd be per day. It could be even more depending upon what type of info they seek to store. Also just look at Alexa. A toolbar in itself cannot provide the usefulness of info nor effectively help organize a gigantic index. The toolbar is only installed by certain types of users and thus presents a number of statistical problems.

I just think that when you get down to it, some of this can be used to effectively prune the index but I think this is only a small piece of many layers google uses to accurately filter and interpret information.

[twist]

Not sure why this hasn't been mentioned yet, probably because this is a webmaster forum and not a techie or conspiracy theory forum, but here goes,

1) Dell computers ship with network cards

2) Network cards each have a unique MAC address

3) Dell, if they wanted, could keep track of MAC addresses per computer

4) Dell can keep records of customer name, address and so on

5) Google gives Dell billion bucks

6) Dell not only installs Google toolbar but gives Google customer info including unique MAC address

7) Google now not only knows what sites a user visits, but could possibly know their name, how much they spent on their computer, where they live, what software options they have installed, and so on.

So Fred in Idaho just bought a $3,500 Dell but didn't opt-in for anti-virus software. They also see that Fred has chosen a dial-up ISP. So Google starts by showing Fred ads for broadband in his area, some good anti-virus software, and some cheap vacations near Idaho.

[Brett_Tabke]

I think there is a huge number of Google software deals going on. Google is popping up as the default choice in dozens upon dozens of software packages. Stuff we aren't reading about in the main stream.

[bwstyle]

Old schoolers raise your hand if you remember when SNAP.com (then owned by NBCi.com) used user bahavior to affect serps, it was a highly abused people had bots that would click on their listing and never come back to get them higher ranked.

I think Google needs to find a really good way to combat this issue before allowing it to have any major impact ON SERPS.

[TomWaits]

DirectHit anybody?

[Brett_Tabke]

> DirectHit anybody?

Was an 8th grade science fair project compared to Googles' phd level work in this area...

[Artstart]

Guys you just gave me a huge new idea!

Thank you =)

[Artstart]

This is not the idea I was just flashed with, but if that'll be the case I'll try to do a mild DOS attack on my own sites after I figure out what kind of info is being sent back to google servers.