“The important thing to realize is that even on the Web, the word ‘connection’ doesn’t have to mean “‘hyperlink’.” – Awesome. And that’s what search engines are trying to capture.

It’s very narrow-minded to just want to get links links links. You’ve gotta try to get people, people, people to connect with you in a real way.

I agree that we’re guessing, at best, but it does seem logical. Google has invested a lot in a host of services and products that track visitor behavior. I don’t think the question is IF they’ll use visitor behavior as a factor, but HOW they’ll use it.

Cheers!

I get worried when people talk about “metrics” like on-page-time, back-click-time, click-to-conversion time, or “session time”. I worry that people are going to take these “Direct Hit” (google it), type metrics as gospel. Lets look at just a few of the inbound data sources google has available:

- on site searches (and all related data like spelling clicks, cached clicks, various services clicks like youtube to images to news, etc).
- clicks off Serps. They’ve had that click tracker running since 2002.
- google checkout – conversion tracking.
- toolbar. Although my gut tells me most of this data isn’t worth much except for demo and psycho-graphic data.

The crown jewel of Google data intel is Google Analytics. It now runs on more sites than the rest of the top trackers combined. It completes the Google picture on the site level.

Given that vast and massive data mine, only Google could tell you what they would do with gathered data and how it would apply to the algo. Anything we come up with is nothing but a guess and must be discounted as such instantly.

The reason it tasks me, is that there are alot of bloggers spreading the notion that visitor “on site time” (ala, direct hit), is something Google would factor in. There are alot of variations on that thinking. Without the same data google has in front of them, I don’t think we can even make those kinds of guesses.

In the meantime, Chris, I think someone has poached your comment and used it to comment on my post as submitted to Sphinn. Check it out: http://sphinn.com/story/96071

Not sure what to do about this.

Even if more emphasis was placed on a site’s bounce rate, wouldn’t that still be biased against new sites? I would think so. At the same time, links are no guarantee that a site will have a good bounce rate or be more relevant.

In my opinion, I don’t see visitor factors dominating links in terms of value. It’s a cyclical pattern.

If it’s a good website, it will have good content, and therefore, more visitors and link love (a hub). If it’s a bad site, there will be very few connections to the rest of the virtual world.

What would happen if it depended on the idea of consistent balance? Search engines would select sites that have matching visitor quality and links. If links become far higher than visitor factors, the site’s placement would fall and vice versa.

What would happen if a new site with perfect visitor/link ratio was compared to an established site with the same qualities and just higher numbers? Wouldn’t this scenario still benefit the older site?

I’m really quite unsure, but I will certainly be watching curiously. In the meantime, I’m going to build on both sides of the equation.

Certainly makes you think…

Angie