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Yes or No - Does User Behavior Affect Google Ranking? What's the Consensus?

by trentonlaura
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
One of the things I've always wondered about and I hear SEOers go back and forth on is whether or not (and how) user behavior affects a site/page's ranking.

I've heard Google explicitly say that a site's Google Analytics DOES NOT have any bearing on a page's ranking. This makes sense to me, as many sites do not have GA installed.

What about all the data it gets from people who use Chrome to browse the internet? Surely Google can see patterns about any given site through Chrome usage data. For example, if a page is well optimized for a keyword yet has a terrible bounce rate (again, as an example) and Google can see its Chrome users leaving that page instantly, I would think that would have a negative impact on the rankings. In this case, Chrome users are directly telling Google that that page doesn't have the content they're looking for (relative to that search term it's ranking for I suppose).

I was curious what folks around here thought about each of these ideas and this in general? Obviously I titled this as "Yes or No", but I'd appreciate some context with your answer, as well.
#affect #behavior #consensus #google #ranking #user
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    Absolutely, it does. Google Analytics and Google's ranking algorithm are not the same thing. The majority of websites do not even have Google Analytics accounts but that has no bearing on whether they show up in the rankings or not. It would be a very poor algorithm if it only counted the relatively small number of websites that use Google Analytics. That number is estimated to be, at best, 8.4% of the web - https://martech.org/as-google-analyt...bsites-use-it/

    What does affect rankings is how popular the pages on a site are and whether people seem to value what is on them. Backlinks and user signals are how Google determines that. In the past, Google only had backlink data to gauge popularity but they have a much better tool than that now - their own browser, which nearly 70% of all people use. As you correctly point out, they don't need a page's Google Analytics data to determine the usefulness of that page. Although they only have data from people who use their own Chrome browser, that's a whole lot of data!

    Of course user behavior affects a site's rankings. As more and more people are seeing, their backlink building efforts are not producing the results they did in the past. It takes superior content, which results in better user signals. Without solid user signals, all the backlink building in the world is not going to help any site that is in any sort of competitive market.
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    • Profile picture of the author trentonlaura
      Thank you for the response, Dave; I don't see much about people talking about how much Google uses user data (in relation to websites/pages) from Chrome as a ranking factor.

      It seems very obvious and personally I think it's all for the better because it rewards good content ultimately rather than built (not earned) backlinks (which never made any sense to me in terms of why build links SHOULD work).
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  • Profile picture of the author FaraiMist
    I am working on SEO and can tell you this is a huge factor. Google had evolved a lot during past few years and introduced matrices like Page Speed, User Experience , Load Time , Content Quality etc. This all focused on user experience. Its a big YES from me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Old Molases
    Yes, it does. The most prime example of this is the time spent by a user on any website, and how they interact (navigate) on the website.
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  • Profile picture of the author getseowebsite
    Yes, User behavior affect google ranking.

    1. Organic search rankings are influenced by user behavior
    2. Click-Through Rate is influenced by user behavior
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by getseowebsite View Post

      Yes, User behavior affect google ranking.

      1. Organic search rankings are influenced by user behavior
      2. Click-Through Rate is influenced by user behavior
      Your click through rate is not influenced by user behavior. Your click through rate is your click through rate.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jaume Ros
    I mean I think at the end of the day google is trying to see whether that website responds the users query and intent. If they click into a website and after a few seconds click out and go to another result - Thats telling google that the first option might not be the best answer for that question (or keyword!)
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    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      Originally Posted by Jaume Ros View Post

      I mean I think at the end of the day google is trying to see whether that website responds the users query and intent. If they click into a website and after a few seconds click out and go to another result - Thats telling google that the first option might not be the best answer for that question (or keyword!)
      Well, it's really only telling Google that if they are using the Chrome browser. Google has no clue what people are doing if they use Firefox, Edge or any number of other browsers.
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  • Profile picture of the author agrajag
    Results are also affected by multiple sequential searches.

    For example, if someone uses a very general search term they are likely to get a huge number of results, and the relevancy is likely to be lower. Therefore, they will do a second search using more precise terms which will hopefully provide more accurate results.

    The sequence of searches builds up information for each following SERP.

    This way people build up layers of relevancy, whilst Google teaches them how to choose more suitable search terms.
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