In the search marketing world there will always be speculation surrounding Google’s algorithm and what they are going to do next; however, one source of discussion that has caught my eye is that of User Behaviour. Google patented an application back in 2003 and have openly discussed the patent filed as ‘Information retrieval based on historical data’.
Search marketers are today familiar with backlinks, domain history, and perceived link value but there is now talk of tracking user behaviour; data sets such as click-through rates, bounce rates and pages viewed will be assessed and scored for relevancy to the search query.
The addition of these data sets will mean that websites with poor user interaction will be down graded, whilst websites with healthy click-through and low bounce rates will fair well. The key here is relevancy, the more relevant your website is to a searchers query Google rewards your site with better results page positioning and so doing they improve the over the user experience.
Relevancy is key to successful search marketing.
For Google to remain in pole position they must continually seek ways to improve the results they display for their users. With 90% of Internet users turning to search engines when looking for products and services having relevant page content will improve the search engine user experience and the conversions for the website owner.
All search marketers know that web pages with high bounce rates are not relevant to the searchers query and convert poorly. Applying the bounce rate metric to Google’s search algorithm the will return better results for the user, who wants to spend less time searching for the information they want.
Some folk will react negatively about tracking User Behaviour Metrics, viewing it as invasion of privacy etc., but Google (and other search engines) should indeed care about site performance and bring these metrics in to the equation if they want to return relevant search query results.
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