Do search engines take visitor numbers into consideration?

[nomax5]

Do search engines take how many visitors your website is getting into consideration when sequencing the list for a given search?

Suppose I had a website that was poorly optimised had very little content very few or no backlinks but it was receiving a lot of advertisement off the web from TV or some thing and so lots of people were visiting it on a regular basis.

Would that site be listed higher because of the large number of visitors
Also would it’s PR go up?

[RyanSmith]

I have no proof of this, but I would say no. The search engines have no way of identifying how many people visit your site unless your visitors have something like the alexa toolbar installed.

The fact is though, if you have lots of visitors, odds are you also have lots of backlinks.

[nomax5]

Ahh of course they don't silly me

if they did have visitor numbers though that would be a good indication of a websites popularity perhaps thats the eventual plan with google anaytics .

[RyanSmith]

The problem with that method, all the currently popular websites would grow exponetionally and the rest would sink to the bottom.

I think the linking scheme they are using now is probably the best method.

[vistadivine.com]

No not at all, PR and rankings are all about lots of quality and related links nothing else.

Akash

[markov]

Even the quantity doesn't matter. It purely depends on the quality links.

[Kate]

yes i too agree , for serps most imp is quality links links and links .. their age, relevancy etc all matters.

[chml-srucnoc]

Currently don't matter, and they never will ;)

[vistadivine.com]

Ya now most of the major search engines have started taking the age factor into account for giving rankings.

Akash

[Paz]

[QUOTE=RyanSmith]The problem with that method, all the currently popular websites would grow exponetionally and the rest would sink to the bottom.[/QUOTE]

This is a fair point but the same could be said of the linking pattern algo that would mean that high ranking sites get found more easily and are therefore more likely to acquire links. I don't know I'm thinking aloud but I've often wondered if a site that gets more serps clicks would score more points somehow. Another possibility would be to demote sites that rank highly in specific searches but never get clicked on; ie are (somehow) completely irrelevant to that search.

The search engines are certainly monitoring organic clickthroughs. If you look at the AOL data that was accidently published recently, they are not only monitoring clicks but also storing rankings of the sites that do get clicked on.

If the SEs did use clickthroughs, or even lack of clickthroughs in their algo, it's even more essential that you write an attractive title and description.

Cheers,
Paz.

[SEO_AM]

I agree with Paz... I believe that Google is using this data is some manner and will likely use it more extensively in the future. User data and experiences is much more indicative of which site and its pages are most popular, e.g. ctr, length of stay, depth of visit, etc.

[Wit]

As for the Pagerank: that is solely based on the number and weight of your inbound links. It has nothing to do with "quality" or "related links" or "number of visitors".

[vistadivine.com]

Well I dont agree PR does depend on the quality of the incoming links if you have links from high quality sites then your PR will be much higher.

Akash

[Kate]

yes title and description are always imp for SE as well as to attract the visitors to click the link of your website..

[vistadivine.com]

Ya you are right but it has nothing to do with PR. Links is all what matters.

Akash

[Kate]

I mean for users when you are already there in ranking in first page your title and description should be catcy so that it can motivate them to click and visit your site

[Wit]

vista - we may have different ideas about "quality links". If you're talking about the PR of the page linking out, and the number of links on that, then I agree. But I was referring to that with my "weight" remark.

PR has nothing to do with high quality (=related and focused) anchor texts or sites with high quality content.

[AllsoppG]

[QUOTE=Paz]This is a fair point but the same could be said of the linking pattern algo that would mean that high ranking sites get found more easily and are therefore more likely to acquire links. I don't know I'm thinking aloud but I've often wondered if a site that gets more serps clicks would score more points somehow. Another possibility would be to demote sites that rank highly in specific searches but never get clicked on; ie are (somehow) completely irrelevant to that search.

The search engines are certainly monitoring organic clickthroughs. If you look at the AOL data that was accidently published recently, they are not only monitoring clicks but also storing rankings of the sites that do get clicked on.

If the SEs did use clickthroughs, or even lack of clickthroughs in their algo, it's even more essential that you write an attractive title and description.

Cheers,
Paz.[/QUOTE]

I'm sure i seen a google video (created by google) that they work on user searches so if a site at no.2 is gettin clicked more than no.1 for a certain search term then they may change things around :rolleyes:

[teknicks]

Good question....but the answer is no and yes.....the engines do in fact collect click-through data and use that in some way or another within the algorithm to formulate a site's rank. It may not be heavily weighted, but it is indeed a metric used. It is a catch 22 though...sort of the same as the rich get richer....those who have #1 rankings will naturally have higher click-throughs....