Google Tracking Users On Sites

[kidder]

I am curious to know how much a users pattern of clicks on a site, length of stay on a site plays a direct role in the Google serps / PR?

I've just noticed one our heavy traffic sites in terms of page views take a big jump in both PR and rankings - the on page SEO is pretty bad with this site in general so I was taking a guess user activity might just be a factor. This particular site is much more about users than any SEO so in this case Google is getting it right.

So there are 2 things here -

Users pattern determine a % of PR
Users pattern determine a % of search weight

[norton j radstock]

How would Google know this?

[hvacdirect]

" How would Google know this? "

Toolbar data. But I doubt it, as it's too easy to game.

[g1smd]

Adsense serving could track you across all of the sites that you visit.

Why are people so unaware of that?

[kidder]

backlinks are also pretty easy to "game"

[Bewenched]

Alot of sites use google analytics, why wouldnt we .. its free.

[freelistfool]

My guess is that Google is collecting click data from multiple sources (google search, toolbar, analytics, adsense, etc.) for use in making the SERPs better. If this data isn't being used in the algo today it will at some time in the future.

It makes sense that sites that are sticky and/or refer to other sites via clicked links would be more valuable...and should be placed higher in the SERPs than a site that gets hit and is left via the back button immediately.

[kidder]

freelistfool - This was the basis for my first post - Maybe not so much for the higher search results but for the assignment of the page rank toolbar (pr) which has jumped quite a lot with the last update - I have done no linking at all with the site. The obvious thing to me is the users activity / page views may now be having some effect but it is only a guess. Maybe this is a step towards pushing the "thin" sites down the serps, if your a multi page cateway to an affiliate site then things my just get even tougher into the future.

[BigDave]

Kidder, it is NOT used for the pagerank calculation. There is no point to include anything other than links in the PR calculation like it has always been.

Any other factor, is just that, *another factor*.

[kidder]

Serious? You think links are it for PR calculation? As far as what the toolbar tells me on a number of sites this is NOT the case Dave.