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But how does Google measure form completions or purchases for rankings?

Again, I'm not talking about Google analytics. We use it heavily for our ecommerce sites. I know how the UA tracking code works. Google claims that they don't use GA data for rankings, and I would tend to believe them.

Thanks for the answer. Spot on.

There's been a lot of speculation on "task completion" and how it relates to ranking. If completing a task is a purchase on an ecommerce site, how is Google measuring it? Is it only through Chrome or by some other means?

how does Google measure when someone completes a form?

is that possible, or is Google just checking to make sure that the cart and the form work correctly? Was that the point of the "Zombie" update?

I guess I should have phrased the question a little differently. This is not related to Google Analytics.

When I do a Google search, Google is able to track my actions, and is probably using the data as a ranking factor. Josh Bachynski did a Whiteboard Friday on it.

https://moz.com/blog/panda-41-google-leaked-dos-and-donts-whiteboard-friday

How is Google able to track user actions after they click on a SERP listing? Where are they getting their data?

Assuming that Google is using click data from users to calculate rankings (bounce rate, time on site, task completion, etc.) where does Google get the data, especially from browsers that aren't Chrome?

We have an ecommerce website, and we show a popup for first time visitors to our desktop site to join our email list. Google has cached pages with the popup.

Can I assume that this is a problem?

Yep. We got hit around 7/22. We're an ecommerce site, and most of our 2000 products have little to no search value. We were focused on roughly 50 products. We took about a 20% hit on desktop and 35% on mobile. We had one high value (100K+ monthly searches) product ranked #1 that dropped to #3, and I wrote the traffic drop off to that. Digging in a little deeper, I realized that we got hit. The traffic dropped maybe 10%, but it's been a slow erosion ever since.

All but a handful of products have descriptions between 40-60 words. We are in the process of creating new content, but it's expensive.

Does it make sense to nofollow product pages that have no search value?

I would agree to a point. At its heart, Google probably uses some form of numerical score for a page as it relates to a query. If a page is a perfect match, it scores 100%. I would also suggest that attaining a perfect score is a virtual impossibility.

The scoring system, however, is dynamic. The page may be perfect for a particular query only at a particular point in time.

1. Google's algorithm changes daily. What's perfect today may not be perfect tomorrow.
2. Semantic search must be dynamic. If Google discovers a new Proof Term or Relevant Term related to the query, and the page in question doesn't contain that term, the page is no longer perfect.

These are only a couple of examples.

For practical purposes, the amount of testing, research, etc. to achieve a perfect score at some point delivers diminishing returns. The amount of effort required to push a page from 95% to 100% isn't worth the effort, especially since Google's algorithm is a secret.

Sometimes good is good enough.

If you optimize your content properly, you should be able to rank all of those keywords with 1 page (with great content and links). Those keywords are semantically the same. Hummingbird is a awesome if you know how to leverage it.

One trick is to use parentheses. For example, your opening sentence could be "ImageCo is the world leader in Device Imagery Software (DIS) Solutions."

I would use "DIS Software" and "DIS Solutions" a few times in the document, and I would place those keywords in close proximity to the non-abbreviated keywords so Google links them semantically. I would also use all 3 Keywords in their own H2s.

The trick is not to overdo it and make it look natural. No need to spam it.

I would also be mixing in Proof Terms and Relevant Terms throughout the document with the most important going in the first 2 paragraphs.

For a title tag, I would use:

Device Imagery Software | DIS Solutions | Company Name

It's much easier and cheaper to write 1 page of killer content and build links to it than to build 3.

We are an ecommerce company, and we outsource our mobile site to a service, and our mobile site is m.ourdomain.com. We pass the Google mobile ready test.

Our product page content on the mobile site is woefully thin (typically less than 100 words), and it appears that we got hit with Panda 4.2 on the mobile site. Starting at the end of July, our mobile rankings have dropped, and our mobile traffic is now about half of what it was in July. We are working to correct the content issue but it obviously takes time.

So here's my question - if our mobile site got hit with Panda 4.2, could that have a negative effect on our desktop site?

We are in ecommerce, and there are a few review sites that are dominating the rankings for our products. The sites are very good - very well written content (2000+ words) and visually appealing sites. The 2 main culprits are clearly black hat. One site's backlinks are pure spam, and the other is buying footer and sidebar links.

Will ratting them to Google have any impact? If not, any suggestions on how to compete? Our competing pages are product descriptions, and creating a 2000 word product description seems inappropriate. Also, all of these products are brand new, and due to extensive media spends, the search volume is very high. Since they are beating us to the punch by getting good content posted first, they are proving difficult to displace.

I have Google Alerts set up for our websites. I started receiving alerts every time we add a new product to the websites.

I recently started getting email notifications from Google re: new products on our websites. I am subscribed to Google alerts. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Responding to the original question about crowdsearch.me:

It definitely does work, but the results are a little unpredictable. The best way to use it is to help push pages on page 2 or better up the rankings.

There are other similar services out there, and they are also effective.

Sooner or later the Google boys will figure out how to combat it, but for now, it's a viable black hattish weapon.

I have it on pretty good authority that Google uses secure search for indexing. I've seen some definitive test results that categorically prove that Google uses your browsing activity for finding and indexing pages, plus unofficial confirmation from former Google employees.

It's a dirty little secret.

This would be a great test for Rand Fishkin to build a case study on.

You could display all of it and make some clever use of jump links. Just sayin...

EGOL: Makes perfect sense. This, IMHO, is a bad move by Google. They always say "Create for Humans, not Bots" but proper use of tabbed content does make for better UX. We are both eliminating tabs for rankings. Google as usual talking out of both sides of their mouth. Who wants to spend 5 minutes scrolling to the bottom of a ridiculously long page?

EGOL is the man! We moved some content behind tabs, and our rankings did drop. When we moved it back out, they returned. We had some other issues/changes as well, so I can't 100% vouch for correlation.

One interesting test I did run is to run some searches for sentences that were hidden behind tabs on our site. The tabbed content was found, indicating that it was indexed by Google, so they aren't ignoring it.

We decided to go tabless, and I think we are the better for it, but who knows? If you have an enormous amount of content on a page, I would consider tabs, but I would leave the juiciest bits out in the open. FWIW.

Backlinks from DA 21 sites are nothing to sneeze at. I'll take them all day long. Moz actually just rolled out a great tool called "Spam Score". The lower a spam score the better. It will show you the spam score for any links that Moz has found. Spammy links can affect your rankings, so spammy links should be investigated and possibly disavowed. If your site's own spam score is low, I wouldn't get my panties in a knot.

Sounds like Google's Semantic Search update called Hummingbird. We are seeing a lot of traffic for keywords that don't appear on our pages. Pretty impressive on the part of Big G.

We actually have 2 nearly identical ecommerce websites, with identical product descriptions, and prior to us doing a cross-domain canonical, we would frequently have both sites ranking in the top 20 for a keyword.

The cross domain canonical really helped - massive rankings increase.