Remember that Google tracks every click on natural search results. There’s a subtle redirect that captures this information and records it. So, we know they keep track of our clicks, and they do so based on each query.

One would have to assume that they’re writing a time stamp for each of these clicks. Hence, the ability to determine pogosticking behavior isn’t that outlandish.

The mechanism to determine if a result is statistically outside the norm based on rank is the rub, but one that I feel Google and others are likely able to tackle.

I’m not saying it’s a heavily weighted factor, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t one of those 200+ signals that Google uses in the search algorithm.

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/search-pogosticking-and-seo

http://www.huomah.com/Search-Engines/Algorithm-Matters/The-final-word-on-bounce-rates-as-a-ranking-signal.html

Glad to see peeps like yourself interested in the geeky side of things… I am considering starting a ‘SEO Geeks’ newsletter..knowledge is power right?

Have a great week…

Thanks for dropping by!

Oh, and feel free to link drop to your hearts content.

http://www.whostalkin.com – think this was the one you mentioned. looks like an interesting tool..

Regards,
Paul.

Thanks for following along. I have spent the weekend talking to my IR engineer type friends and have read a TON of related research on all of this. I hope to get that up by the end of next week into the week after maybe…

Ultimately, there is hope for the technology, but there are still hurdles for gleaning real actionable data (noisy) and very little work done on dealing with spam. In many cases there is more sense in a corporate enterprise search level where spamming is far less likely.

So, from what I am finding in further research, it is as Matt said, noisy and spammable.

(by the way, found my way here testing Joe Hall’s buzz monitoring toy – Who’s Talking – Google it, no need her me to be link dropping on my first visit :0)

Thanks for the support tho… appreciated.

Thanks for your comments. Google would be able to work out bounce rates via both Analytics and their site itself.

For example lets assume I search for “shoes” the first result on Google takes me to a spam site. I click back instantaneously and Google is able to detect that I haven’t viewed much of the site in question. This could be used in combination with Analytics data.

But as you say – a high bounce rate needs fixing regardless of its impact.

Saying that, I agree that if you have a high bounce rate it should be looked into regardless of what Google may think of it. Either the wrong people are coming to your site or something is wrong on your site – either way, it needs fixing.