Does Google factor in site traffic, time on site, bounce rate, etc into it's ranking algorithm?
-
I can't seem to find an authoritative answer on this.
-
If Google came out today and said "site traffic, time on site and bounce rate are all going to be factors of our algorithm" then ethically-challenged individuals and companies may considering banks of users based in places with low labour costs to try to manipulate the algorithm.
It is almost certain that Google has considered this in the past but is worried that people may try and game the system. As such I would expect any ranking element related to the quality of a site to be more complex.
There are suggestions that Google is trying to get algorithms to be able to judge the aesthetic quality of a site and that this could be a factor in the future
-
You won't find any authoritative answer on this, some sort of bounce could be used by Google but you will never know the % for this specific bounce rate.
-
Yep! thanks!
-
Of course Google may not come right out and say it, but this article seems to make a case that bounce rate is a factor: http://seoblackhat.com/2008/11/21/bounce-rate-seo/
And here's an interesting Google blog post where site speed is a confirmed signal of their algorithm: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html
Hope this helps!
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
-
How much do branded search organic traffic & direct traffic impact the ranking for their non-branded topic/keyword?
Hi Moz community, We can see many websites with a reputation will have more number of visitors landing with these two types of traffic mostly (>90%): organic traffic of brand queries and direct traffic. Will these visits help and impact the ranking of these websites for the keywords/topics they been employing? Ex: Moz will have many such visitors. Will this really impact the ranking of Moz for non-brand queries they try to rank for, like "SEO Software". If so, will this have a huge impact or it's just a minor ranking factor. Because we have this with our website and we don't see such boost in rankings compared to our competitors with less direct traffic; where as I been looking at some SEO articles that direct traffic is one of the most important ranking factors. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What's the best way to go about building/using interactive snippets?
I'm starting to see interactive snippets (I guess they're called islands) like the attached image in our SERPs, so I figured I would look into experimenting with them, but I'm not entirely clear how to proceed. I have only seen them in adwords, so is that the only way you can use them? Is there some way to set them up or some service you need to set them up organically? Lost, but intrigued, Ruben SW7ak4d.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
What are tips for ranking on Google Maps?
I have another thread going where everyone is saying to keep both the Places profile as well as the Google Plus Local profile I have for my company. I have another person telling me that it has a negative effect to have both accounts at the same time so I'm assuming thats why the listing never comes up on places unless you zoom all the way into the map to the address of the storefront. With that being said, can anyone provide some good tips for ranking first page on google maps? Goole Plus Local - https://plus.google.com/114370561649922317296/about?gl=us&hl=en Google Places - https://plus.google.com/103220086647895058915/about?gl=us&hl=en
Algorithm Updates | | jonnyholt1 -
Changes in Google "Site:" Search Algorithm Over Time?
I was wondering if anyone has noticed changes in how Google returns 'site:' searches over the past few years or months. I remember being able to do a search such as "site:example.com" and Google would return a list of webpages where the order may have shown the higher page rank pages (due to link building, etc) first and/or parent category pages higher up in the list of the first page (if relevant) first (as they could have higher PR naturally, anyways). It seems that these days I can hardly find quality / target pages that have higher page rank on the first page of Google's site: search results. Is this just me... or has Google perhaps purposely scrambled the SERPS somewhat for site: searches to not give away their page ranking secrets?
Algorithm Updates | | OrionGroup1 -
Google Algorithm change? - Brand name now overwriting title tag?
Anyone else noticing this happening? In Google search results, many of my sites are now showing up in the following fashion... "Site name: page title" I read a few articles in the past few days that state that Google may be playing with the algo but have not read anything from Google directly. I should add that I first noticed this on Feb. 21 and have seen it rolling out more and more since. I have only noticed it on a few competitor websites thus far. Edit:Some links talking about the subject http://www.seroundtable.com/google-brand-title-appending-16432.html http://semandseo.blogspot.ca/2013/03/google-brand-title-in-search.html http://www.designbigger.com/blog/seo/google-rewrites-page-titles-to-push-brand-over-keywords/
Algorithm Updates | | mattylac0 -
Does google have the worst site usability?
Google tells us to make our sites better for our readers, which we are doing, but do you think google has horrible site usabilty? For example, in webmaster tools, I'm always being confused by their changes and the way they just drop things. In the HTML suggestions area, they don't tell you when the data was last updated, so the only way to tell is to download the files and check. In the URL removals, they used to show you the URLs they had removed. Now that is gone and the only way you can check is to try adding one. We don't have any URL parameters, so any parameters are as a result of some other site tacking on stuff at the end of our URL and there is no way to tell them that we don't have any parameters, so ignore them all. Also, they add new parameters they find on the end of the list, so the only way to check is to click through to the end of the list.
Algorithm Updates | | loopyal0 -
Difference in which pages Google is ranking?
Over the past two weeks I've noticed that Google has decided to change which pages on our site rank for specific keywords. The thing is, this is for keywords that the homepage was already ranking for. Due to our workload, we've made no changes to the site, and I'm not tracking any additional backlinks. Certainly there are no new deep links to these pages. In SEOmoz dashboard (and via tools/manual checking with a proxy) of the 24 terms we have first page ranking for, 9 of them are marked "new to top 50". These are terms we were already ranking for. Google just appears to have switched out the homepage for other pages. I've noticed this across a couple of client sites, too, though none to the extent that I'm seeing on our own. Certainly this isn't a bad thing, as the deeper pages ranking means that they're landing on the content they want first, and I can work to up the conversion rates. It's just caught me by surprise. Anyone else noticing similar changes?
Algorithm Updates | | BedeFahey1 -
Google removing pages from Index for Panda effected sites?
We have several clients that we took over from other SEO firms in the last 6 months. We are seeing an odd trend. Links are disappearing from the reports. Not just the SEOmoz reports, but all the back link reports we use. Also... sites that pre Panda would show up as a citation or link, have not been showing up. Many are these are not Indexed, and are on large common Y.P or other type sites. Any one think Google is removing pages from the Index on sites based on Panda. Yours in all curiosity. PS ( we are not large enough to produce quantity data on this.)
Algorithm Updates | | MBayes0