Visited stats affecting rankings?
-
If visitor stats affect rankings should we be worried as we are making our website probably the most user friendly useful site in our field but this includes cutting down the time it takes for a user to order and our pages are also one page so all the information is there and easy to use the problem is this results in 1 page visits and probably one of the lowest visit times of our industry.
Say for example a user sees all of the information and and gets a quote another website has 5 pages the users spends more time and visits more pages to find how to order but they eventually leave after they have give up would this site win via Google user stats?
-
Not sure what it's going to take to kill this theory that visitor stats are used as a ranking factor, but here's some food for thought.
Google has shown repeatedly that their primary focus for ranking factors is things which can be consistently applied to all sites, and are hard to fake or game. (And they work very hard to punish sites they do catch faking or gaming ranking signals.)
The only way they could gather these visitor traffic signals is by jacking into your Google Analytics or Adwords/Adsense accounts
- Google Analytics is used on a little over 60% of websites. So Google would be ignoring over 40% of websites (including many of the really big players who use enterprise analytics like WebTrends, SiteCatalyst etc)
- using data from Adwords/Adsense would be even more unreliable as an even smaller percentage of sites use these.
- incorrect implementation of tracking codes causes completely inaccurate Analytics data. I see this on new client sites all the time
- in 30 seconds I can adjust your website to have Analytics report any Bounce Rate you want.
- another trivial tweak to your site's code and I can have Analytics report double or triple your pageviews.
Bottom line, trying to track visitor stats is far too unreliable and easily manipulated, not to mention outside their own terms of service.
On top of that, Matt Cutts is on record as categorically stating that Google does not use visitor stats as ranking signals. (I was in the room at SMX Advanced last year when he said it.
** The one exception to this is Google's use of bounce rate from the actual SERP pages. It's widely considered that having a user click on your site from a SERP, then quickly bounce back to the SERP for another search is an indication of negative quality of your site.
In addition to all of the above, as you yourself state, Bob, there are many sites where a short time on site and few pages viewed can be indication of a site that does its job very well. IMO Google's not dumb enough to measure all sites with the same yardstick like that.
Hope that makes sense.
Paul
-
Bob,
You have posed a question that is a Pandora's box of conflicting opinions. So, off the the opinions, etc.
First, for my money, the best read for analytics knowledge is Avinash Kaushik whose blog is Occams Razor. About a year ago he had a very thought provoking post on choosing what KPI's you use wisely. And this is a bit of your dilemma.
You start with "If visitor stats affect ranking..." and then the question assumes certain facts not in evidence: Pageviews are a factor in ranking, time on site is a factor in ranking, bounce rate is a factor in ranking, etc.IMO , if they are, they are small factors. Assume your problem looks this way: We have a site that now provides the quickest and easiest way for our industry to get a needed group of products. The ease of use and the rapidity with which a product can be found are staggering and we are seeing more and more conversions as the result. Is Google's algorithm going to cause us to lose SERP ranking as the result? I think the answer is NOPE.
Are you seeing more and more visits? Uniques? etc.? If things are as you say they are my guess would be yes you are. Congratulations.
In our shop we have a few clients. I do not know a one who would complain about more visits and more sales, even if they dropped in ranking. But, the good news is, you won't if all you say here is true. But,
If your info supplied here is anecdotal and based on a common belief that "Our site is better than the other guys because we built it.", then, well things may work out differently.
I urge you to read the post by Avinash as it is really enlightening. Simply put, a great question from it is this: if a site has a lot of visits and lower time on site and page views is that because people did not find what they wanted? or, Is it because they found what they wanted and took care of business? IMO, Google gets there are two correct answers.
Hope this helps,
Best
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Not ranking
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharonEKG
so our website (www.18brandz.com) has been up for 8 months now and has not been ranking yet, we are indexing, moz crawler SEO issues are regularly fixed and we are down to about 25 non major issues, i started using google lighthouse to optimize and had made changes. we post GOOD quality in house written unique content, we follow an SEO templet of guideline i wrote for titles/meta title tags, structure, site speed has been optimized and as for the moment we rank A OR B with no major issues on all speed checking sites possible (gtmetrix/google speed insights/ webspeed... etc) but nothing. and i cant figure out why we wont rank, our field of digital marketing is a tough one and very competitive , i know, yet not ranking for so long seems odd. our only know fact major disadvantage is the lack of links and no link building strategy. any suggestions? any idea?1 -
My SERP Rankings are unbelievably inconsistent, how is it possible
Almost all of the keywords i track in moz's keywords ranking report show insane inconsistency. nearly all my keywords (according to moz's rank tracker history) were in the first or second rank for a week or 2 during the last 6 month.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | datawork
nearly all my keywords were nowhere in the top 5 pages in the weeks prior or after the week that the keyword was ranked at the top of the first page. I'm adding a image of an excel chart showing the ranking - each row is a different keyword, each column is a different date. 51 means 51+ (or - nowhere to be found in the first top pages) Could you please help me make sense out of this? How can it change so frantically? Thanks, eZDVEEW.png0 -
Highly Related, But Not Ranking
Hi Everyone! I'm doing a bit of research on a domain and I've come across something really odd. Doing a search for "asset based lending software" (not with the quotes), www.case.net doesn't show up anywhere in the first 100 results. However, at the bottom of the results in the "Searches related to asset based lending software" section, it lists "computer software enterprises inc" as the 2nd item (the company associated with www.case.net). Any ideas here? NdsoeNn.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QueTech0 -
Low Domain Authority & Ranking
My Domain Authority has tumbled in the last six months from 28 to 21. Search traffic has dropped from about 4,500 per month to 3,000 per month with most of the drop being in the more competitive terms. Lead generation is off by about 70%. This is after spending $12,000 on "optimization" with a MOZ recommended SEO firm and spending another $17,000 implementing their suggestions. My real estate brokerage firm has completed some press worthy deals in the last month. If I can get these deals mentioned in a reputable newspaper like The New York Times (or other real estate publications like NY Observer, Real Estate Weekly) will this help domain authority? If my domain authority is this low, how difficult is it to move it higher? Before reaching out to these publications, should I create a blog post about these transactions on my website? Any suggestions as to how I can improve domain authority? My URL is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. I should add that my SEO firm had about 30 toxic links removed and filed a disavow for about another 80 links. MOZ is only showing about 25 domains linking to our site. I suspect not enough to get us to rank. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
What is the best way to track rank?
I'm curious what tools and tracking mechanisms everyone uses to track rank, especially with all of the changes in the last year. I've read a ton of articles that say even in 2014, rank will continue to matter, but besides using the keyword rank tool in Moz, I was hoping to learn what everyone else uses to track rank on a keyword and page level (are those two separate things?).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RachelEm0 -
Yahoo rankings anomaly?
Two days ago I went from ranking outside the top 50 to ranking #1 and #4 for two great terms on Yahoo. Now two days later I don't rank in the top 50 again. I sure wish I knew what that blip on the radar was all about. It would be great to get ranked again. Seems like a mystery. I have not heard of this happening on Yahoo before. Maybe it was a problem with the open link explorer? Anyone see this happen before? Thank you, Boodreaux
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Is my footer bad? i.e. hurting rankings
Just curious what people think of my footer. I think it provides some value. Not that many people click on it but it doesn't look that bad in my opinion. Curious what others think. If getting rid of it would help SEO I'd look into it. I outsource all my coding though so don't want to spend money tweaking what doesn't need to be done. www.jobshadow.com Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | astahl110 -
Strange Ranking Fluctuation - Some Predictions?
My client is the green line currently on 3 & 4. The pages that rank 3 & 4 are 3 -> home page targeted to main keyword 4 -> specific service page targeting same main keyword as home page (a bit of cannibalization) The competitor targets other keyword as their main keyword. The 1 & 2 position is taken by him but with 2 different sites (2 sites -> 1 owner). They have a high pa & da but is from gaming websites and stuff while my client has targeted good links. Any predictions... would the green go back again ? 🙂 IuVio.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mosaicpro0