interesting Google thought

[Puma]

I am not sure but perhaps another webmaster can tell me. If a visitor visits your sites and stays for less then 5 seconds does Google take that into consideration for ranking?

I ask because I notice a few of my visitors come to my site via a Google search and leave right away. I do not have a banner farm and do have lots of available promotions and reading material. So leaving in 2 seconds after finding me through a search engine doesn't make much sense.

I'm wondering if this is other webmasters doing this on purpose to reduce the ranking of their competitors.

[GCG]

usually this is related to how fast your hompage loads for the user, if more than 3 seconds they hit back and click on another link.

in your case I would remove some big sized banners or optimize them with netmechanic :

xxhttp://www.netmechanic.com/products/GIFbot_FreeSample.shtml

[davemerry]

GCG is right, I remember some survey results a while back (think econsultancy.com?) which stated that the main reason for someone hitting the back button early was due to load time. In a world where you don't need to wait for anything visitors have grown a lot more impatient than they were 5 years ago.

In regards to Google tracking this, they certainly do through Google analytics under the bounce rate stats. Whether it is a ranking factor is only down to personal opinion, I think it could have an affect if the bounce rate is abnormally high compared to competitors, as it would indicate the result is irrelevant to the users query. I doubt unless it is REALLY high Google plays any importance on this, if they did then it would be so minuscule that I wouldn't worry.

Saying that if I click through to any of my sites through search engines I always have a browse just in case it is paranoia!

In short, I wouldn't worry unless 90% of my visitors bounced

[BingoHouse]

I was under the impression that Google changed their definition of bounce rate from "pageview less than five seconds" to "viewing one page and no others" a few years ago? Which means that a site with a high-quality, content-packed homepage could still display high bounce rates even though it's an authority source on a subject (I could be wrong though).

[davemerry]

Hi Clay!

Just did some research, your right there, I always assumed it was time-sensitive for some reason - need to pick my Google Analytics game up

I'm surprised that it doesn't have a timer on it. Surely it is a good sign if the user is met with enough information to keep them busy for a minute or two, and then they click off as it means that the page is relevant. Yet Google still say you should minimise the bounce rate http://www.google.com/support/analyt...y?answer=81986.

Wikipedia's bounce rate must be ridiculous!

[baldidiot]

I doubt it - how would the big G know that a user was on your site for less than 5 seconds? Once the user has clicked through, googles search has nothing more to do with them.

Admittedly analytics could track it, but I'm pretty positive that google can't use analytics data as a ranking signal. Besides, people that were being negatively affected by analytics data could just remove the code etc...

[davemerry]

Google knows everything just of the top of my head there is 3 ways Google would know how long your on a site for:

1. They do use Analytics data unless you opt out https://www.google.com/support/googl...n_US&utm_id=ad.

2. Google Chrome, I'd put bets on data collection being one of the primary reasons for them creating a browser.

3. Page reloads (not sure if this is actually right) - but surely if you visit a site through Google and then press the back button and continue searching, I'm assuming there would be a way for them to track this through there own stats?

[BingoHouse]

Analytics calculates time on site by subtracting the timestamps between the first & last pageviews of a visit. So, for example:

If you load https://www.gpwa.org/forum/ at 12:16:01, click this thread (https://www.gpwa.org/forum/interesti...ht-200811.html) at 12:16:05, and leave the GPWA entirely at 12:20:00, Google interprets that as a four-second visit - even though you actually spend just short of four minutes looking at this thread. So sites with complex content and rich pages are actually "punished" by this method - as are simple but effective sites, like www.whatismyip.com - which is why a lot of SEO experts suspect that Bounce Rate is a very minor signal, if Google uses it at all.

[baldidiot]

Google knows everything just of the top of my head there is 3 ways Google would know how long your on a site for:

1. They do use Analytics data unless you opt out https://www.google.com/support/googl...n_US&utm_id=ad.

I was under the impression that this data wasn't used for search:

Will sharing my data directly affect the ranking of my natural search results, ad quality score or ad placement?
Your website data will not be used to affect your natural search results, ad quality score or ad placement.

3. Page reloads (not sure if this is actually right) - but surely if you visit a site through Google and then press the back button and continue searching, I'm assuming there would be a way for them to track this through there own stats?

I nearly mentioned this, but I don't think it could be used as a viable ranking signal - I know I will often open multiple pages from the same SERPs without even looking at the page. For example, if I'm looking for a discount code for something I might open the first 5 results in a new page rather than click through, check one, and then go back to check another. People like me would make it incredibly unreliable!

Very interested to hear if anyone has any opposing views though.