The Emerging Importance of Behavioral Data in Rankings
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As SEOs, we watch the search engines carefully for any indication of what factors they consider important when it comes to ranking a web site in their results. When those factors change, we change our approach. That was especially true for links. Now, Google seems to be using something even more telling than links for ranking web sites -- user behavior.
Links are a natural part of the web. They tie everything together in a logical and easy to follow manner. They hold the web together and make the Internet usable.
With the release of PageRank, links took on another form. Instead of real votes for websites, links gained search ranking value. The more one has, the higher one ranks. It doesn't matter much if the link is designed for visitors to follow (the real purpose of the link), as long as search engines count it in the algorithm.
The fact that Google, and later other search engines, started using links as a ranking factor changed the face of the web and the true nature of links.
Now as we move closer to the new decade (already?!), search engines are incorporating another factor into their ranking algorithm - user behavior data. Search giants (Google in particular) have collected, and continue to collect, enough data to start using it as a ranking factor.
In this article I discuss the ways in which Google tracks users, signs of changes in the search engine optimization industry, and the incorporation of the third (or more correctly fourth) ranking indicator.
Search Optimization 
