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]

[Wlauzon]

I don't really think that any search engine, much less Google, is going to move to a patterns only algo.

I can definately see them adding it in as another factor however.

Not sure how it would work, but it would have to check at least two things:

1. How many people went to that site
2. How long did people spend on that site (or page)

Without #2, #1 is meaningless.

And I would add at least #3 - How many went back to that site within xx days.

I can see how it would improve the overall relevance, but it cannot do it all alone. All the other factors such as links will still have to be a part of the algo.

[cymbal]

Isn't tracking user behavior on an open system dangerous? They can't have enough tools in place to really know what the users intent was and where they were ultimately satisfied in their search.

In the scenario travisk laid out only the first page of the SERP would drive any information back to Google. That's more link a popularity contest for the 10, not all sites related to the query.

[econman]

User info wouldn't be the only type of data that Google would rely on -- logically, this would be added to the overall mix, or used for specific purposes.

For instance, user behavior data could be extremely useful in helping Google identify and filter low quality sites (aka "spam) -- sites filled with computer-generated pseudo text, MFA's and networks of simulated sites that are created for SEO purposes.

It's not obvious what user data google would rely on, or exactly what they would do with this data, but through statistical analysis they should be able to find all different sorts of interesting and distinctive patterns.

For instance, I would anticipate that there are some very distinctive user patterns associated with MFAs -- when people land on one of these pages from a SE, most of them will immediately do one of two things -- hit the back button to return to the SERPs, or click on one of the ads.

Since people don't spend much time lingering on an MFA site, with enough toolbar data Google should be able to detect them quite easily. And, of course, Google also has access to Adsense data for many of these sites, which would allow it to develop even more precise patterns it can use in detecting this type of site.

[dgrati]

- Read the friggin' patent.
- You cannot use google without accepting a cookie.
- Google checks if you go to a page and go back to SERPs and hit another page, and go back or stay, and so on.

Of course google looks at the traffic going to a page via it's SERPs.

But I don't believe it uses anything else other than the process above to determine relevancy.

Why? Because not everyone uses the Analytics or whatever else you mentioned. And if Google relies on half cooked sources of data it would hurt Google's objectivity.

Old story. Don't know why the big fuss.

[catch2948]

Interesting discussion ... However, there is something that I haven't seen mentioned yet. That is the value of consumer information in itself ...

I have felt for some time that Google has perfected the "art of search" about as much as it can be (artificially, that is). Blackhat SEO will never leave us. As with anything else, it just changes with time. So, it is just a game. But for Google, it is a game where they are spending billions of $$$ to try to win. In my view, Google as a company, is consistently working to move away from this “game” by constantly diversifying itself.

Think about something for a moment. What is the purpose of running a search engine?

Unless you can figure out a way to get visitors to pay you for the privilege of using your search database, you can't make any money from them. So, in my view, this leaves only one other profitable alternative, advertising. Whether you decide to watch what people are looking for, and start offering products and services to meet those visitor needs, or sell advertising to those who wish to, it's all about advertising.

So, now we have a way to make money from the search engine. We can charge a premium for advertisers to advertise in our search engine. So what’s next? Well, it would only stand to reason that if you could give more information to advertisers about the habits of those whom they wish to target, you could charge them even more.

But let’s not stop there.

Let’s say that you are the one running the show at Google. With all of the information that you now have access to, concerning what people are looking for, and how they are looking for it, what would you do with that information? Would you sit back and be content with taking the advertising revenue? Or if you saw a big trend coming, would you invest company assets, in order to “cash in” on that trend? And we haven’t even began to talk about utilizing the ability to create trends.

The real point here is not which way you choose to go. It’s more about having the options to choose from. The wealth of consumer information at Google’s disposal allows this, and I believe that they will continue to look for ways to both expand the scope, and refine the quality of this information. Please note that all of this avoids the contentious issue of actually selling the information of any of Google’s visitors.

Having a decent search algorithm and database is just a means to an end. At some point, as with any other business, what happens if it becomes more expensive to run the search engine than it is worth?

[Brett_Tabke]

> has this been going on for years?

Two Words:

Florida Update.

[b0rdslide]

We have a domain that we use for operational purposes. If you were to visit this domain, you would just see a splash page indicating the site is under construction. However, for various internal purposes we access this domain quite actively.

Perhaps as a result of our activity, I recently noticed the splash page has an Alexa ranking of roughly 100,000.

What is interesting is that the splash page also has a google PR of 5, despite having no inbound links that I am aware of, and despite the fact that Google, Yahoo and MSN all indicate it has zero inbound links.

Is this a subdomain by any chance? I've frequently found that subdomains almost automatically inherit some of the parent domains PR. As for the Alexa rankings just treat it as a load of rubbish, just one or two people developing a site and using the FireFox Search Status extension of the alexa toolbar can push the site into the top 100,000.

[soapystar]

perhaps traffic patterns can explain something that baffles me....for years we have been pushed the line that crosslinking is a no-no....

with big daddy i see this is a must-must..

for example the 'lastminute' guys.....every single page cross links with their network and big daddy has seen them massively improve for deep searches....it seems to be no problem any more to cross link if you are a big branded site..see this more and more...

[econman]

WRT the example mentioned earlier, our activity occurs on subdomains, but the PR is visible on the main domain (which is just a splash page).

For example, we use

CMSworkarea.example.com/examplepage/section/

for internal purposes related to development of other sites. If you visit

example.com

you see a simple splash page saying that example.com is parked, or under construction, or whatever.

There are no links going to example.com or any of its subdomains, yet the Google toolbar shows it as PR 5.

[FourDegreez]

econman said what I was going to say. The most obvious contribution the Google toolbar could make would not be to add points to a score, but to subtract them. If the only thing the toolbar contributed was to help filter out the worst sites from the SERPs, then that would be great.