Does Google Toolbar or Analytics information affect ranking?

[internetheaven]

Been reading alot of stuff on Google recently and some of the things they are going to try to accomplish and some of the things they have patents out for seem to rely on knowing how a user interacts with a site. The only way I can think of for them to get such information is through Google Analytics or their toolbar. Which doesn't make sense because basing any scoring on those figures would be no-where near the true state of the web as not everyone uses GA or GTB.

Any ideas? Things like how much time a user spends on any given document etc.

Thanks
Mike

[tedster]

Some ISPs also sell clickstream data. I'm not 100% sure that Google is a buyer, but they certainly have the cash, plus the computing power to make use of that kind of information.

Google mentions traffic factors in many patents at this point. It's clear that they've got something to work with.

An obvious source of traffic data would be their occasional tracking of clicks on various search results. They certainly know the average number of clicks each position gets. So if a #1 falls well below the expected number, that's a bad signal. If a #2 results gets a very high number of clicks compared to the #1 that'savery positive signal... and so on.

If the same person comes back to the same set of results and rapidly clicks on another position, that is a kind of signal, although not a totally clear signal. And if the same person clicks on one result, then rapidly makes a revised query, there's another kind of signal.

My thinking is that pages and domains are rarely measured in isolation, whether it's traffic data or human editorial input. Rather, they are measured in relation to their position on a particular SERP.

[Gremlin098]

Does anyone know if Google takes visitor time on site into account when ranking?

Mod's note: Moved from another location. Not exactly asking the same question, but close enough that I thought it was worth bumping this thread up to see if there's additional discussion on the topic.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:58 am (utc) on April 24, 2008]

[moftary]

I believe such kind of informations will never be disclosed on public.

Cheers,
Hossam

[edit_g]

If you were google, wouldn't you use every information source that was free and available to you?