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There is quite extensive discussion about this topic on another website and I am really losing my confidence. The thing is that I claim that the amount (count) of visits is not a criteria for increasing the PR of the particular web because:

  • Google just doesn't know about every single visit on a webpage (in case it's not using GA)

  • Google just would not rate by something what Google actually affects

grg
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petiar
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5 Answers5

15

No. They do not. And your logic is spot on.

  • They don't know how much traffic any sites gets unless it is using Google Analytics which is only a tiny portion of all websites.

  • Traffic is not an indicator of content quality or relevance.

  • It can be easily manipulated. You can have your own bots reload your pages constantly or run an ad campaign that boosts your traffic. Or just trick people in coming to your site. A visit is a visit.

  • It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Sites that rank #1 in Google will get more traffic then the sites below it. As a result it will get more traffic which will help keep it ranked above the other sites.

  • It doesn't take into account how long someone was on a page. If someone visited the page and then immediately left because they didn't like it or it wasn't what they were looking for it still would be a visit.

Update

John Conde
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As @John stated your logic is correct. I'll add that even with Google Analytics, Google wouldn't try to correlate and analyze the traffic data from it to affect your ranking because GA is just another web service. I just don't see them using it to analyze your sites.

Gup3rSuR4c
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I find it plausible that Google uses the number of visitors to a website as a ranking factor.

  • Google can get this data (See Can Googlebot read any hosting stats?)
    • Google Analytics: Although Google has said they won't use Google Analytics data for ranking purposes.
    • Google AdSense, Google TagManager, or DFP: These are all 3rd party JavaScript on many web pages that could send data to Google the same way that Analytics does.
    • Google toolbar: The Google toolbar sends data to Google about every page that the user with it installed visits.
    • Firefox and Chrome Safe Browsing: Google runs a service that checks the reputation of websites that you visit. It is enabled in both Firefox and Chrome by default and it sends information about each site visited to Google.
    • Other PageRank indicators: Other browser plugins that show the pagerank of a page also send the URL to Google for every page visited.
    • From ISPs: ISPs often sell data about which pages their users visit. I don't know that Google buys this data, but it could. In the case of Google Fiber, Google is the ISP.
    • From DNS servers - Google runs its own popular DNS servers. Users send queries to these Google servers to get the IP addresses of the sites they are going to use.
  • Amount of traffic would be correlated with site quality. Google would be especially interested in the number of visitors that are using the site because they want to. Google would certainly want to filter the data. They would do so in a manner similar to how they have to be very careful about which inbound links to count.
    • Filter out bot traffic
    • Filter out or discount advertising traffic
    • Filter out fraudulent traffic
    • Filter out traffic that Google itself sends the site (to avoid a feedback loop)

Even if Google does use traffic as a ranking signal, it would probably be a minor one.

  • Most of the time amount of traffic would line up with other indicators such as Pagerank
  • Google has never announced that they use any traffic signals as a ranking factor

The reason for Google to include traffic as a ranking signal would be to catch sites that suddenly get lots of users and a good reputation without using SEO as their primary traffic source. Sites that go viral or rely on social media for example.

Stephen Ostermiller
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I am in the ecommerce for 25 years. Whatewer google spokepersons say I have experimrnted many times and I am sure they are not telling the all trues.

  1. Paying google adds counts
  2. No. of visits are importante. Were more imoprtant years before.
  3. The most valuable thing that google boot or AI is counting are last years: purchases made from SERP. Must be different persons-devices-IP adresses. Try and see. Very soon you will see your page in first 10 on serp. Depends of the competitors of course.
Babe
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Google uses clicks and click duration to measure search quality, which affects how documents are scored, and in turn may affect how they rank. User interaction data has played a significant role in how Google rates the quality of its results.

A former Google employee admitted this and more about the extent that Google uses user data in a testimony given in September (Google v USA).

Here's the full court transcript

I covered this last month (not self promo, can't find another source):

Witness Testimony Highlights the Significance of User Data in Google’s Search Algorithm

Here are some slides from Google is Magical, an internal slide deck from 2017.

Not how search works

how search DOES work

Google is magical, internal slide deck, 2017

Here are two articles by Bill Slawski that detail some relevant patents:

User Click Through Rates and Search Result Rankings at Google

The Long Click and the Quality of Search Success

Mike Ciffone
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