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> Google tries to work out which sites are interesting by how long you spend on the site. How would Google know how long you spend on the site? It only sees wh
by eterevsky 4y ago
> Google tries to work out which sites are interesting by how long you spend on the site.
How would Google know how long you spend on the site? It only sees what links you clicked and doesn't know what happens next. (Unless the website uses Analytics, but Analytics doesn't affect search ranking.)
- IshKebab 4y agoThey know if you click a result then 10 seconds later click a different result.
- defrost 4y agoLet's not forget they also have a very popular browser that itself collects and bundles back home a lot of usage infomation from most of its user base: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/16/wonder-about-the-data-google-collects-in-chrome-and-links-to-you-now-we-know/ https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/16/wonder-about-the-data-goog...
- eterevsky 4y agoI think this is a bit misleading. Chrome gets access to various data to enable various features -- for example to pass your location to the website (when you allow it to do so). Browsing history is used e.g. to power URL auto-completion. This doesn't mean that this data can be used to inform Google Search ranking. That would be very shady and potentially illegal. I work for Google, and even though I do not work specifically on Search ranking, this doesn't sound like something that could be happening.
- defrost 4y agoI'd be surprised if they don't have the capability to enable "linger time" statistics that collate frequency of new web site loads, memory demands, etc for performance. This relates to the "how can they know how long I look at a web site for" asked above - if not specifically they do at least know the answer stochastically.