Reward for Popularity and In Site Stay?

[WebFreedom]

Hi,

I notice a lot about incoming links etc. I'm curious what others think of a couple theories I have on Google rankings:

1. The duration of time that customers remain at the site before returning back to Google search

2. The overall traffic to the site. This would be measured by Alexa or similar programs and would include people who type in the domains directly from the browser as the result of news stories, print ads, etc. not just link traffic.

Hi Gary,

I haven't seen any indication that Google includes these factors in its ranking algorithm, although I suppose it's possible. The first seems unlikely to me, as a user may stray to other sites before returning to Google's search page, and Google would need to somehow track their activity in order to have anything approaching accurate data.

Just out of curiosity, how did you develop these theories? Are they based on experience, something you've heard or read, or just something you think makes sense? I'd be interested to know.

Sam

[coop99]

Their toolbar and the new analytics program give them more than enough data and user statistics than they really probably need. By watching browsing trends and tracking user habits they can see a lot more than when someone left Google search and came back.

They just keep dropping new tools on us and many of them are released solely for user tracking purposes. Google Page Creator is another good example along with blogger.