Does the length of time visitors spend on a page have impact on SEO?

[user name 666]

also, if someone is referred to a website via email or don't follow site - might this also help contribute to SEO since google and other engines could help further see that referrals are from a variety of sources.

[blogworker]

in my opinion there do not have a direct impact on SEO, but have an indirect one.
for example, if the visitor stay in your site for a long time. it means he or she has more interests on your site content comparing to those who stay in a short time.
briefly saying, it can decrease you bounce rate to some extent.

[sasai]

i guess yes, Google sometime do manual review, if it is full of rubbish content/ugly layout, definitely it will affect its ranking.

[SimpleSEOTips]

It's not something which I have seen strong proof to argue yes or no. However, in my opinion I would expect to see bounce rates as something which will have an increased importance in the Google algorithm over time. The only reason I say this is that it (bounce rate) is a signal of quality when it comes to user behaviour.
There are however, plently of subjects of interest which users will only require to hit one web page for and then leave (i.e. currency exchange rates of one currency of interest) which does not neccessarily point to low quality but instead very relevant quality. With this said I would expect Google to be smart enough only to compare like-for-like searches and apply what it thinks is the importance of bounce rates.
Lenght of time I feel is less relevant if at all.
Just my two cents and I have no hard data to back this up I'm afraid.

[supershoesclub]

sure,I do think google do care about the visitor's experience on a website.if the visitor have many page views on the site, it means the site is interesting and rich in content,otherwise, the site is lackof useful content will result in a high bounce rate.which is considered not good in google'e eyes.so it will impact the seo result a lot,i think.

[user name 666]

Originally Posted by sasai

i guess yes, Google sometime do manual review, if it is full of rubbish content/ugly layout, definitely it will affect its ranking.

really? I wonder how they would have time for a manual review of sites, even if its just random reviews.

[syedakram1989]

SEO depends on on-page and off-page optimization not on the visitors behavior.
You decide how much time you spend on Google.You just search for a keyword and click on a link and you left the Google within 10 seconds.

[LinkVariety]

Google measure "success" by the number of repeat queries.
If a user backs straight out of your site and carries on searching then they know your site is perhaps not the best for a given term, so, bounce rate matters.

Time on site along with bounce rate is another quality metric. Since the Panda updates a lot of people speculate / believe that these metrics carry more weight... I am one of those people.

I have been overhauling old sites to make them more engaging, add more value etc, and it seems to be paying off.

[junne]

IMO it matters a lot as someone coming on to your website and staying for long time then it seems you are relevant and have good content.
But if someone coming on to your website and not staying for long time going back again to serp results and clicking on another website and staying there for long time then it seems that website have better content than yours,an advantage for that website.

so i think length of time matters a lot.