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This is a question that is rarely asked, if at all. Yet it may have more impact on your website than you might think. So, does using Google Analytics affect your website search engine listing on Google?
We know that Google are always revising website positions within the search results, this is a fact. We know that they are using links and content to determine whether a site is popular. So what's stopping Google from using Google Analytics to gain more information about your website? And furthermore, what information could Google use to position your website within its rankings?
Tracking Bounce-Backs
Google could theoretically track the number of bounce-backs a search phrase or link attracts. This could have an impact on your overall site positioning or just a single page. A page with numerous bounce-backs could have an assumption of being misleading or uninformative, altering its search engine positioning.
Timing Visitor Stay
It is quite possible for search engine results to be influenced by the length of time people are staying on your website. Typically this is information that Google has no access to, unless you have Google Analytics.
Conversion Rates
Thanks to the conversion rate tracking within Google Analytics the search giant now understands (and can quantify) your website objectives. This information could possibly be used to rank your website against your competitors websites. Effectively delivering search results that have higher conversion rates.
Keep the above examples in mind, you may have a few more thoughts on some of the other features provided by Google Analytics and how they can be used by the search engine to get more information about the internet and the relevence of your website.
So I put these question out there: Do you think Google Analytics affects your website listing on Google? Do you have any proof or valid ways to measure the impact of Google Analytics on your search engine listings?
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| Yuri commented on July 10, 2007
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Just using GA won't help. You need to make sure you convert visitors to customers and have people stay on your website to have any, if at all, effect.
By the way, I think the effect (if any) will be negligible. Having unique page titles, accurately describing pages, can help you much, much better - and is way easier to do, too.
Here's a good thread discussing the topic of off-page factors in Google Adwords (which is related to this one):
www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=49334
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| Ronald Villapaz commented on April 28, 2008
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It is helpful when we say that we are monitoring our site in order to know the site performance, to see what to improve by varrying different data from your site. Bounce backs are one of the important tools that I am looking at google analytics. It will provide the data on how people are looking at your pages the way how long they are staying at your page.
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| Shirley commented on April 30, 2008
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This is a very good question. And considering that more and more webmasters are opting to use Google Analytics, it does make sense that Google would use this in organizing the SERPs and determining page rank.
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| David commented on May 15, 2008
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according to Google (analytics faq page) -
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. Aggregate data across many customers will be used to improve our products and services.
I interpret this to mean it won't *directly* affect your ranking, but it will allow them to tweak their algorithms which may affect your ranking.
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| Adam Lyttle commented on May 15, 2008
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Interesting analysis David
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| Rodney commented on February 25, 2009
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David,
I agree with your analysis. Google won't use the data to help or hinder you. But they may use the data to better understand web searches in general. If you choose to have your site Benchmarked they will definitely use your data for other purposes. But you have to opt-in for that.
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| Darrin commented on June 25, 2009
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Here's the answer to the question if using Google Analytics affects results to SERP. Search Google for "gloji". The top sites all are doing some things right to rank where they are, but view the source code for the sites in result pages 1 and 2 and see how many have Google scripts installed......if you would guess more than 75% you'd be right!
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| Steve commented on November 2, 2009
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I guess I have to take issue with this whole idea.
As for measuring bounce-backs and timing visitor stays, as long as Google is your next stop (which it usually is if you're bouncing) they can easily measure all that without you having analytics running.
As for conversion metrics - People put conversion metrics on their sites for their own reasons. Those reasons may not have anything to do with user satisfaction, which is what Google cares about. Think about all the people who go to Amazon to e.g., read user comments about products, which has nothing to do with Amazon's chief metric - did you buy something.
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| Dentist commented on November 16, 2009
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This is a scary thought. If anything Google at least COULD use analytics to hurt your search engine rankings. They could take bounce rate if it's very high and severely drop a page. I appreciate David showing that Google says they won't use Analytics to affect search results, but I've never felt Google cared much about webmasters so I guess I don't trust what they say. I might need to give them the benefit of the doubt but I can't help it, I don't trust them. Wish I felt like I could but I've had good pages fall out of rankings before. Peace out.
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| Shristy Chandran commented on January 11, 2010
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This is something which i have always been apprehensive about, and it has proven to be true at least in my case.
One of my website has improved search rankings since the time i added GA to it for tracking purposes as the website has good conversion as well as visitor retention percentage, but in another website the page views are very minimal while the visitors count keeps increasing but the bounce rate also keeps increasing and that has for surely through GA been tracked by Google and it is helping them in holding down the website from showing up higher in search rankings, is up at first page but occasionally when the backlink count increases it goes up the rankings up to No.3 slot but drops back if i don't build links frequently (Of course very competitive keyword, no doubt), so this is true at least in my case.
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| Biggest Bingo Bonuses commented on February 25, 2010
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Our site has been using GA for some time now - the thought that Google would penalise you just for the stats in the Analytics section seems unlikely: Surely they would have most of this infomation to hand anyway. Also, during page redesign, a higher bounce rate is likely - would they really want to run the risk of penalising those sites that update their content/front end regularly? Having said that, it may be one of the reasons ranking seems more difficult than with a site that is well established *before* using GA...
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| Antony commented on February 27, 2010
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According to my own experience it seems that GA can influence ranking:
3 weeks ago I installed the script and my main keyword went from #1 to #19
NO other changes were made to the website. FYI for the last 3 years I was ranking # 1 for this keyword.
Another very interesting thing is that the drop happened less than 24 hours after installing GA.
One week ago I removed the script and 2 days later I was at # 18 . I am now building more back links to try to get back to #1
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| Website Designers commented on March 1, 2010
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Many of us using analytic reports just to see how many visitors we can get, but important is how to convert these visitors to customers analytical report helps if you to see from where you can get visitors and also are they are just visitors or they find some thing on your site.
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| Management commented on April 9, 2010
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Since Analytics is free, you need to ask yourself why Google would want to have spent money developing and continue to spend money maintaining it. It has to be to collect additional information (e.g., bounce rates) to rank pages. You must assume that the use of Analytics can either advance or decrease your position.
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| Patterson21Cathryn commented on August 7, 2010
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Just for fun
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