Site Usage Statistics and organic ranking

[clickangel]

I'm not sure if anyone has tested this properly but i'm begining to suspect that google is using site usage statistics as a site quality guide and ultimately as a ranking variable. The this what i've seen so far on one of my sites (site A)

Week 1= bounce rate (83.88%), Avg time on site (0:0:57), Pages/visit (1.28)

no changes made to the site apart from the usual link building.

Week 2:  Traffic drops by 30%, Keywords generating traffic drops by 39%. Bounce rate (87.25%), Avg time on site (0:0:43), pages/visit (1.21). I replaced all affiliate links on my homepage to internal pages where the chunk of the content is and did a reconsideration request.

Week 3: Traffic goes up by 30%, keywords generating traffic goes up by 65%, Bounce rate (30.41%), Avg time on site (0:3:02), Pages/visit (3.74). This is not the most scientific test but surely google must be using these variables and a ranking factor?

Anyone seen something along these lines or have thoughts on it?

[JoeAmadon]

I don't doubt that search engines use bounces back to SERP as a ranking factor. But I'd be hesitant to attribute the statistics you're reporting as a result of that. What I think is a stronger factor, although it's tough to determine with what you've shared, is that the internal linking from the homepage to "content" pages is getting bots to those pages so they actually see the content that exists on your site. If what I suspect is true, I imagine you'd see that a good portion of the new traffic is entering on pages other than your homepage.

[clickangel]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the comment. Its one of those things that its very hard to establish a cause and effect relationship or a correlation. What i've found is a increase in traffic not only to the home page but to the internal pages as well.

I'm keeping my eye on this to see where it all goes.