What the Google Patent Filing Means to YOU - Watch the traffic, too
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Google is also going to begin taking into account the traffic patterns of your site's visitors (again, probably through using the Google toolbar data). In this case, Google is going to be looking at trends in things such as length of stay on the page that someone gets to through the link as well as how many links, both internal to your site and external to it, get used by a visitor. In other words, a site which people are getting to by links from other sites, and then staying for a while and surfing around in heavily, will be scored higher than sites which do not get this kind of traffic.
This one is going to be a huge win for authoritative websites such as our own SEO Chat -- and for blogs as well, for that matter.
Essentially, Google is going to be looking at user behavior on your site, and the history/trending of that behavior. They are going to be looking not only at what kinds of links, where they go, and what the link text says, but at user behavior regarding those links and the history/trending of that behavior.
This is both a very good thing for new sites, and at the same time a very bad thing. It is good because it means that a well done content driven site, that people use, like, and come back to, is likely to climb the rankings quickly. However, it also means that there will be some "time lag." Yes, you can still get Google to spider you quickly, but because history is going to be important, to get top rankings you're going to need to build a history in the first place.
Again, this means that you're going to need to focus on giving your Web surfers what they want. Your site's "stickiness" is going to be important not only to your own sales, but to your rankings within Google as well (which of course will also affect your sales).
If you're a customer of mine, you know that I'm a big fan of putting blogs on your sites and creating authoritative sites. What is going on in the Googleplex only reinforces what I've been saying on this front. It is already not at all uncommon for someone's blog to rank higher than their actual site. Given the new things we can expect to see happening at Google with their search engine, this trend will only accelerate.
Not only that, but authoritative sites, with regular update frequencies and lots of users are going to get a huge win out of these changes. The reason for this is simple. Not only is Google going to begin looking at your site's history and the history of visitors to and from your site, it is also going to be grouping all of their various history trends into a single lump and provide scoring that way. In short, sites such as blogs and authoritative sites with tons of content which, by their natures operate exactly in the manner Google is looking to score, will get a benefit not only from each item individually, but another boost when they aggregate all their scores together.
Next: Why is Google making these changes? >>
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