Does Google use GA referer data from password-protected pages?

[mayest]

I recently read a post that suggests that Google might use data from Google Analytics, and that this might help small sites.

I ask because my site gets a lot of referrals from links that are on password-protected .edu pages. For example, many of my referrers are from BlackBoard and other course management systems. Since these pages are "hidden" I'm wondering if Google is giving me credit for these links that they can discover by looking at my referrer data in GA. I'm pretty sure that nobody can prove that they do, or not, but what are your thoughts?

[edited by: tedster at 7:50 pm (utc) on May 31, 2008]

[tedster]

Very interesting question. I don't think that Google does this, needs to do this, or can afford to. I'd say if Google can't crawl a page, then it can't give any weight to links that might appear on that page.

I don't think Google uses Analytics data for anything other than mass-scale benchmarking. I work with sites that use GA, sites that don't, and sites that have added GA after a long period without. No suggestive differences have ever surfaced.

[mayest]

You are probably correct. I suppose there would be a huge uproar in some quarters if Google started mining GA data for ranking purposes. In fact, I was a little surprised by the blog post that suggested Google might be doing this.

It just seems a shame that these, presumably high-trust, links that are behind password protected .edu pages can't be used. I shouldn't complain as my site is already PR4 on most pages.