The data I will be presenting will be based on my own research, and research done by other participants at SeoChat and 100 anonymous participants who were kind enough to donate their time.

I hope this article helps you better understand what effects Googles behavior factoring has on you site. Please be sure to post your comments and thoughts.

Okay first of all lets go over to SeoChat and notice a experiment which was started by a distinguised member gazzahk and the goal of this experiment was to determine if clicks to a site in the Google results can have a positive or negative effect on a Google ranking. Here is the official thread for the experiment.

Experiment #1 – Do clicks effect Google rankings?

To experiment this theory we asked the audience for particpation and got about 65 who stated they were participating. We took a site and page which was not currently being used for anything and which we were sure would asas not get any new backlinks.

We then found a phrase for which our test site ranked around the bottom of page 1(#10,11) for. We asked users to do this search and click on the result for this particular site. The site in the experiment was not using Google Analtyics so Google could not(I don’t think they could ) determine what the users did upon clicking into the site UNLESS they returned to Google which all participants were forbidden to do.

It took about 2 weeks to see a significant change, also not all participants entered at the same time which I believe helped keep the experiment looking natural.

At first we only saw a change of one or two positions so the site stuck around positions #10, 11, 9 and 8. But after about two weeks the site started improving much more considerably, moving upto position #4 and even reportedly #2.

Keep in mind two important things for this experiment. First this was a small scale experiment produced on a phrase which was not competitive at all. Secondly probably aside from the participants there were no other searches for this phrase so in Googles eyes 99.99% probably even 100% of the searches for this result ended in that exact site. This told Google that the other results were probably not what he searchers wanted so Google began moving it up.

I attempted to re-produce this experiment on a much larger scale for a medium competition level keyword with about 100 participants and I could see absolutely no change in positioning so my conclusion is that this particular factor, that is the Quality-Click-Analyis factor has a very small value and you will likely only see results if the majority of searchers are clicking that exact site or if the majority of clicks to other sites result in bounces.

So for those of you who were thinking about hiring Indians to click on your sites positions in Google you can forget that idea, I don’t see anything much less than 5-10K indians changing much j/k

So the results of that experiment are the following:

• For a company keyword search you will likely see your rankings rise based on the fact that most searchers will click your listing as that is what they want.
• For a medium competition level keyword 100 participants all over the world clicking on one listing did not make a noticable change in ranking, probably because there were far more searchers clicking the other listings.
• Likely the majority of clicks going to one site for a particular search would help google determine that site deserved a higher position.
• Hiring Indians to click your listings probably won’t help you much

———————
Experiment #2 – Google bounce factor… does it exist?
—————————–

Okay this experiment was slightly different. On top of asking participants to click a specific listing we told them to spend time at the site, browse around a bit, click links, pretend to be reading etc – Basically act as though you love the site in a natural manner.

On this site unlike experiment #1 Google Analytics was installed on all pages. Like experiment #1 the site/page was not being used and no links were gained before(about 1 year), during the process or even afterward. Never were the sites linked to for any of these experiments. We used three sites for this experiment as well as the data from three sites Google Analtyics accounts which were kindly offered by three webmasters at SeoChat.

For this experiment I had another 100 participants who helped make this experiment possible. I had hoped for something like 500 people and did not expect a significant negative or positive change in ranking based on just 100 participants.

Okay let me explain what this experiment was trying to prove. We were trying to prove that the Google Analtyics data was/is being used to effect sites rankings in Google. We wanted to prove that the Google Bounce factor actually exists and that visitor length on a site plays a part in ranking or the loss of a ranking in Google. So what did the data say? Read on…

I had the participants do their part of the experiment over a weeks time, similiar to the first experiment. They would click the listing, spend on average 7-10 minutes at the page and then would proceed to click related links(inside the site. No outbound links) on the site and eventually spend anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour on the site. They would then exit to a page on the site that was not watched by Google analytics but was still on the site. This way Googles last notice of the movement of that user was still on the site.

For the first week we saw no change and were beginning to think the phrase was too competitive and that more users were needed. After about a week we started seeing some changes. After a week and a half the site jumped 47 positions from about 80 to about 33. We believe that with continued experimentation we could have ranked it on the first page.

During this time, while the experiment was being concluded the bounce rate was down to 13% and the average visit length went from 1 1/2 minutes to 12 minutes.

After the experiment ended and users stopped clicking into the site we watched as the sites bounce rate began to go back upto about 75% and the visit length to return to about 3 minutes. After about 9 days we saw the site return to a little better than it was before the experiment(around 78) – Again nothing was done with this site/page except for the experiment. It was basically a dead site.

So based on this site and my own research on my own sites I have determined the following.

• The Google Bounce Factor does indeed exist. Too many searches resulting in a click to your site which then result in a bounce could negatively effect your site.
• Somehow lowering this bounce rate, by providing what the users want most likely can indeed have a very positive effect on your site.
• Visitor length likely has a small effect on your rankings as well however in all experiments we could not accurately determine this as a fact. So it still remains speculation. However we are now positive the bounce factor does exist.
• Google Analytics data is INFACT used by Google to manipulate results in their search engine. By using Google analytics your data could have either a negative or positive effect on your site.
• The overall bounce rate for the site and each individual bounce rates for each of your keywords plays a role.

Many of you are probably thinking you should remove the Google Analytics code from your sites and stop using their service. This is debatable. It really depends on your sites data, is it that bad? If your bounce rate is much higher than 65% and closer to 75% and your average visitor length is very low I would recommend removing the code for now. Maybe use Clicky Web Analtyics 2.0 for a while until you can get your bounce rate lower. Also if you have a high bounce rate I would try and figure out why, try and fix the issue and then maybe you can use Google Analtyics again.

I am not sure on this, I have no evidence yet to support it but I also believe the data from your Google Analytics account may be used for Google Adwords positioning too. I don’t do enough PPC to test this however. If a Google Adwords guy would like to test that theory be sure to let me know the results.

Many webmasters have expressed their concern that this type of ranking factor could influence webmasters to hire users to click their listings just to raise their rankings. Well we have already determined that it is highly unlikely you will gain any ranking even remotely competitive based only on clicks however taking into effect whether or not the majority of users bounce and how long they stay on the site can have a effect on your rankings.

However the data also indicated that this isn’t a one-time thing. The data overall and overtime can continue to have an effect so you may lose your rankings if the bounce rate gets high again.

This research is based on the SeoChat experiment, my own sites and about 5 other sites who were kindly donated for use in this experiment. I awant to personally thank all those who participated their time, their sites and their analytics info. It was a great help in making this experiment possible.

If you have comments/questions please let me know.

If you have recently lost a ranking in Google I would be happy to take a look. Send an email to randy[@]1st-rankings.com

Copyright © 2007, 1st-rankings Co.
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The next side-bar unit is the incoming links. This shows you the highest traffic incoming links. Which sites linking to you send you the most hits? I really like this feature, yes Google Analytics and other statistic tools give this data however most incoming php urls get chopped. So you can’t see the specific page they came from, only the domain. I HATE that. This tool appears to give you the full url to all the incoming hits. I am really happy about that! I like to see the pages I am linked from and see why, not just who is linking.

The next stat on the side-bar is the searches. This will show you the latest/highest search phrases for your site. Upon clicking a phrase you can see the search engine that brought the hit, the time of the hit(kind of cool), the ip(click the ip for the traffic pattern on your site the user has made), how many actions have been made by the user, where the user is from and what browser they are using, as well as the length of the visit. This data is all placed conveniently.

Then on the middle of the page you have graphs. These graphs show the past ten days and the traffic for each. There are also graphs depicting the visitor actions and average time spent on your site.

There is a visitors tab which allows you to view all your visitors, where they came from(what search/site/page), how many actions where produced by each and how long their visit lasted and even what time they appeared on your site. Again all the data is conveniently placed unlike some tools I have used in the past.

What are actions? Actions are page views(when a user hits another page that logs as a action), outgoing links(user clicks out of your site from one of your outbound links), downloads etc. By using the actions statistics you can see where each visitor went on your site and what time they went to the page so you can see how long they were at each page of your site. What brought them to your site? Where did they exit? You can see that there too. This tool uses flags to depict the region the user is from. It even shows a google map of where they are. Not sure that will do me any good but its there in case you need it

The content statistics. I personally prefer the Google Analytics top content stats better than Clicky. Basically these stats show you a graph, your top content for the day and how many hits each got. You can also click ‘entrance’ or ‘exit’ link to see which pages brought the most hits and which had the highest bounce rate.

The links stats give you the ability to see your top referers, incoming links and outgoing links. Which sites are sending me the most traffic? Which page on the site did the user come from. You can also see which sites you are sending the most traffic to. Again as I said before I do like how they set this up so that the php pages aren’t chopped. I will probably use this for checking the sites who link to me from now on.

Searches stats. This feature gives you your search data for the day. What phrases produced the most hits today? By clicking on a phrase you can see which engine the search came from. One thing that sadly Awstats lacks. If you click the ‘engines’ link you can see your highest search engine referers and see the data for each.

Lastly the spy data. This feature allows you to see live data of your site, what is going on RIGHT NOW on my site? See what is happening in real time. The only downfall to having it update live is for big sites, it is updated live so for large trafficked sites you won’t be able to see much as it will keep updating and bumping the results down. However Clicky has thought of this and added a cool feature which allows you to pause the data, look at your stats, get the info you need and then press play again so you can see all the latest data. Very cool!

So my conclusion? I like how Clicky provides all the data in an easy-to-access form and that it isn’t cluttered like many stat tools. I also like the ability to see direct page hits instead of just the domain that sent the hit.
I wouldn’t give up the Google Analytics data however, I like them both and will use them side-by-side.

You can also hook this up with Feedburner to see your FeedBurner stats right in the Clicky interface. For those of you who use FeedBurner for your stats this will be a great improvement.

As a replacement for AwStats this is awesome. If you use AwStats I HIGHLY recommend you make the change now. For Seo/Marketers and/or webmasters who like to stick their nose into web analytics I highly recommend you use Google Analytics and this tool side-by-side.

Also a cool feature to this tool is that it works well with Ajax sites, something most stat tools do not support. For you Web 2.0 lovers this tool is for you.

Check it out yourself:

Please post your comments/thoughts on this tool and web analytics.

Copyright © 2007, 1st-rankings Co.
This article may NOT be redistributed in any way, shape or form. If you would like to link to the article we would appreciate it.

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“Similarly, with logs, we can improve our search results: if we know that people are clicking on the #1 result we’re doing something right, and if they’re hitting next page or reformulating their query, we’re doing something wrong. The ability of a search company to continue to improve its services is essential, and represents a normal and expected use of such data.“

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-does-google-remember-information.htm

Ahh so Google is identifying search patterns, they are looking at specific searches and identifying whether or not the mass crowd is getting what they want. Do they go five pages deep before finding the result they want or do they do another search? If they do eventually find it, is that page a good resource? Do most people who click on it seem to find what they want, in other words do they stay at the site for a good length of time? Maybe a good result buried on the 2nd or 3rd page may rise slowly to the 1st page if the 1st page results are less than desirable. Perhaps some of those sites who are offering nothing to the online community, who don’t even have real content, just computer generated mess, perhaps those sites will find themselves falling to lower and lower positions and more qualified sites taking their place.

Aren’t you excited? I know I am. This can only mean that Google will get better, more relevant search results which means good sites will gain more presence and bad sites will lose theirs.

But could this hurt good sites? Maybe Google isn’t smart enough to work this yet… Of course with anything there is always the chance the wrong party could be effected. This scenario is no different however I feel that the chances of this happening are very slim. Google is very good at rolling out new methods and I see this as no different. The user behavior factor will only be part of a big equation which will determine the quality and relevance of the site to the search made. You will not suddenly see your site drop because one person clicked in and clicked right back out. This factor will be based on overall performance and behavior not likely just one person or one click. That kind of factoring wouldn’t work.

A site may be a very good resource and may deserve many positions but perhaps just one or two of those positions it occupies are not deserved, perhaps they are irrelevant. In this case Google would use behavior factoring to determine that this site should not rank for this specific phrase based on the user response.

One thing you should know however is this. The factoring system Google is using is not a penalty. It is more of a filter of sorts. It is a way for Google to more accurately target the top ten results. However if a large percentage of the results you have obtained in Google have a high bounce rate your site could be subject to suspicion. I am not sure how Google would determine that but I am assuming that a site that has a high number of bounces for a large percentage of their site may see positions start to drop.

So what do you do about this? How do I make my site more targeted and relevant to what the users want? Well my suggestion is to go natural. First off begin writing lots of quality, relevant articles on your niche. Provide a button where users can submit questions which will be answered in an article. Figure out what the folks in your industry want and provide it. Instead of trying to rank in Google by submitting your site to directories and exchanging links how about ranking naturally?

Yeah I said naturally. This is where your content/site is a linkbait and attracts link by itself. I find that sites that are run this way tend to keep their positions better and gain more faster. I think this is partly do to the fact that all the links will be gained because someone thought the site was worth linking to. So the traffic gained by these rankings are more likely to stick around the site longer. That just seems to be the case with the sites I have tried this on.

A good way of determining your weak points in your site is by using a tool like Google Analytics. Google Analytics shows you your top content pages and your bounce rates, average length of visit and all that good stuff. You can use this data to identify which page brought the user, what the referring source was, what keywords were used to get there, how long the user stayed, what pages they traveled to and the amount of time they spent at each page and more.

Your probably thinking “If you think I am wasting time looking at that worthless data your dead wrong“ – Okay don’t but when you lose your rankings don’t go asking me why because I told you so.
This data seems meaningless, monotonous and useless. But if you really look at it you can determine alot. You can identify your weak points in your site. What pages do the best? What pages don’t? Why is that? Was it a useless/irrelevant keyword that brought the user? Perhaps your articles lack information, maybe they don’t actually answer the question that the user had. By looking at your top pages and your highest bounce pages you may be able to determine what you need to focus on. I know I have found this data very helpful to me. Sure it takes time, but so does fixing rankings that you lose, I prefer to fortify my rankings over attempting to re-rank.

I believe as time goes on that user behavior will play a bigger and bigger role in search engines. So we best get used to it now, figure out how to run our sites accordingly and then we will have nothing to worry about and we will be ahead of our competition. Seo is all about adapting to changing times, if we can’t do that I think we are poor examples of seo and webmasters.

If you have questions/comments or just want to discuss this please comment on this post or send me a email. I love to discuss topics such as this. And a thank you to the folks who sent their requests in for a article on this. Hope this is satisfactory.

Copyright © 2007, 1st-rankings Co.
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What exactly is the Google visitor tracking and behavior factoring system(VTB factoring as I will be referring to it in the rest of this article)? Are you telling me that Google will be eliminating backlinks as a factor or replacing their value with a new factoring system based on visitors? If so how will our traffic effect our rankings and placement in Google? Why would Google use such a method?

Okay lets back up and answer one question at a time. I don’t believe there is a way to eliminate the power of the backlinks. There is no other half-way decent way to start the ranking process of a site without them. Google continues to use backlinks to rank sites and again I don’t see that changing all that much, but I do see this new tracking system having a large impact on our sites.

Now I am sure you want to know how your traffic will effect your placement in Google. The truth is I don’t rightly know, I can only speculate, however I got a good idea of how it will work and if your interested keep reading. When I write my articles I base them on facts, research I have done and my own sites. On this one I have seen evidence but not enough to prove anything yet. It is still speculation and I want everyone to understand that.

Now thats out of the way we can move along… …to the idea of visitor length factoring

We can all agree that Google has ranked less than desirable sites at the top, of course in a index of trillions of pages that is going to happen however one thing we all share in common when visiting these sites is a hasty retreat. Am I not correct? If so the perfect solution would be for Google to track visits to sites clicked while doing a search. Then track the length of the visit by determining how long the visitor stays at the site before returning to Google or perhaps they never return.
You shoul understand something however. One visitor will probably not make changes to your positions but a overall consistent statistic of visitors returning within seconds or a short period of time may tell Google your site is less than desirable. In such a scenario the webmaster will see his site drop overtime to nowhere.

That is the first part of this system or what I believe is the tracking system. The next part involves an inside man.

Inside visitor behavior factoring
Your probably wondering who this inside man is. Is it the google toolbar, or maybe it is a Google user account, or maybe a tracker placed on your computer….
Many ideas have been speculated upon. I believe only a few hold any value. The Google toolbar idea IMHO is out, the tracker placed on your computer is also out as that is a violation of privacy and could cause massive legal issues.

The Google user account is fine for tracking how long a visitor stays at a site but I see no way for it to identify what is done on a site. The only plausible way to track this would be through a tracking code placed on the site. This could be through analytics or adsense. I believe Analytics is the most probable way as it is already a tracking code. Now before you all go and burn your analytics accounts let me give you a few reasons why you should be happy about this.

If Google does indeed implement Google Analytics visitor behavior tracking it could be a massive benefit to your site. This is assuming you own a worthwhile, quality site. If this is not the case your best bet is to optimize for MSN and Yahoo! as I believe the first scenario of this system will begin to eliminate those types of sites right off.

If your site is quality and your visitors enjoy spending time there and perhaps you even get a good amount of return traffic you could greatly benefit from this system. If Google could identify this they could tell your site is well liked, so much so that your visitors even return often. Visitor activity throughout your site may also be included in this factoring. Do your visitors stay huddled at one page or do they move around? If so do they move from page to page rapidly or do they spend a considerable time at each page? What could this tell Google about your navigation?

There is another factor which I am unsure about. All of this has basically been my personal speculation but also seems very realistic to me. This last part I am unsure about or even how it would be done.

Visitor importance tracking
If such a factor existed or Google is planning its existence it would rely on the visitors importance value to decide how much of a influence there visit would cause. Again I am unsure how this would be identified. How would Google know one person is more important than another? Perhaps part of this would be based on search paths but who knows. If Google implemented such a factor and it worked it would take care of those attempting to increase there ranking by sending false traffic to their sites. Also keep in mind this isn’t just visitors reaching your site but what they do on your site and how long they spend on your site so it would be pretty hard to manipulate that without a tool or proxy. And I don’t believe Google would have a terrible time identifying that.

So if you would rather be safe than sorry design your sites with the visitors in mind. Make them easy to navigate, provide the information they are looking for and even stuff they don’t know they want. Be the first to write about the latest happenings in your industry. Do anything to get the visitors there and get them involved in your site.
Oddly enough seo have been telling webmasters to do this for a long time. It may soon be worth more than anyone every thought.

Traffic from other sources besides the search engines will suddenly become more important, I don’t understand the webmasters who aren’t taking advantage of this traffic already. Get all the traffic you can, assuming it is half-way decent. I am not talking about buying traffic, I am talking about getting traffic from real sites, real visitors that do real stuff on your site.

Again I want to emphasize that these are all my personal speculations. Please feel free to discard them. I have however seen positive evidence that such a system is in beta. There have been folks since 2003 or maybe earlier who have believed this. Perhaps Google won’t implement it fully for another couple years. I personally am not taking that risk. I create my sites so that they are useful to the visitor, provide unique information and more importantly the information the users want. If and when Google does implement this I will be ready for it.

I know I have jumped around alot in this article and maybe I didn’t do the best job of presenting what I believe to be a revolutionary idea but I think you got the idea. If you got thoughts, comments or questions please post them.

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