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User Behaviour and Google Site Profiles 
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc. (c) 2006

StepForth's methods of providing search engine optimization
services for Google rankings have evolved significantly over the
past year. Since the release of Google's March 30, 2005 patent
application, "Information retrieval based on historical data",
(http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&
Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1
&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20050071741&OS=20050071741&
RS=20050071741)our SEO and research departments have made site
usability and understanding user behaviours a priority.

After reading, analysing and writing about
(http://news.stepforth.com/whitepaper/google-patent-may05/
google-whitepaper.php) information found in the patent
application, we correctly predicted user behaviours were
becoming critical factors in Google's estimation of the
relevancy or importance of documents in its index. To meet what
we see as the major challenges for our search engine advertising
clients in the coming years, we have spun off a SEO friendly web
site (http://www.pureignition.com/) division, moved to provide
several levels of SEO consultancy, and accessed the services of
website usability experts.

A growing number of others in the SEO community are sensing,
testing and talking about issues central to how Google perceives
user behaviours and how that perception affects search engine
placements.

A discussion thread at WebMasterWorld, "Google algo moves away
from links, towards traffic patterns"
(http://www.webmasterworld.com/login.cgi?status=&url=
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/33769.htm), has been
mentioned in several SEO/SEM related news sources and blogs this
week. Started on April 4, the thread has been picking up steam
with discussion generally ranging towards Google's tracking of
user behaviours and how that data might affect search results.

The term "user behaviours" describes any number of actions taken
by people while using a Google branded search tool, while
visiting a particular site in Google's index, and while moving
from site to site or document to document.

Basically, Google wants to know what its users like and dislike.
Those user-judgements have become important factors in how
Google ranks sites in its index and in personalized search
results shown to registered users.

Hundreds of millions of Internet users subscribe to or otherwise
use Google products every day. Google tracks each of their
actions to one degree or another. For some, a simple cookie
feeds basic data back to Google's servers. For others, products
such as the Google Toolbar, Bookmarks, News Alerts and even
Google Analytics feed large amounts of online behavioural
information to Google.

Google pays attention to what its users do when they visit a
particular website, page or file listed in its index, keeping an
active record in order to compile historic profiles of those
documents. If a visitor accesses a document while performing a
Google search or from a bookmark file, Google notices and takes
note. If visitors find a document by following a link from
another, that action (or behaviour) is noted. How long visitors
tend to stay on a document is counted, as are the actions taken
by those visitors after they are finished viewing the document.

It does so for a number of reasons. Search is increasingly
becoming personalized. Google is experimenting with personalized
search results for registered users, showing ads that match
location; results from Google Base that match user locations
registered with searches performed using Google Local. The goal
of search is to deliver the most relevant set of results
possible, and Google is trying to account for the fact that
relevance is relative to the searcher's personal needs. Google
also views user-behaviours as a way to filter out sites that a
mass of users might deem less useful.

Google's core ranking algorithm, PageRank has long used links as
an indication of the relevance of unique documents. One facet of
user-behaviour tracking looks at how site-visitors use those
links as a factor determining the relevance, or importance of
those links. It is also interested in knowing which documents
its users take seriously by gauging the number of visitors and
the time each visitor spends examining the document, and other
documents associated by domain or link.

User Behaviour has become an important pillar supporting the
PageRank algorithm. A short note in the discussion thread from
WMW admin Brett Tabke (http://www.webmasterworld.com/login.cgi?
status=&url=http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/33769.htm)
suggests Google has been tracking a wide range of information
supplied by its users, along with a wider array of information
supplied by the web documents in its index since November 2003's
Florida Update.

Data supplied by user-behaviour is included in a larger and more
important profile Google keeps of each document in its index. As
it visits and revisits documents in its index, following and
evaluating every link it can from document to document, Google
forms an evolving impression of each document. It records that
impression in document-specific historic profiles. These
profiles are thought to generate a reputation score for each
document that acts as a major factor in its algorithm.

Google also pays attention to any changes made to documents in
its index. It finds site or document changes during its normal
spidering cycle. It notices when new text is added to a document
and when text is deleted. When a new link, or set of links, is
added to a document, Google notices and follows the links,
recording the date of insertion and its impression of the pages
or files the new links lead to.

It adds all this data to a profile that already includes
specific details about the history of a URL, historic details on
document and site content, and an evaluation of all links
leading to and from the document. User behaviour forms a fourth
pillar of PageRank's overall relevancy formulas.

It should be noted that Google takes interest in user behaviour
for a number of reasons but with the exception of specific
personalized search data, it's nothing personal, it's only data.
There is no reason to think that Google is playing Big Brother
by tracking user-behaviour. It might use specific personal data
to serve advertising, as is the case with Gmail and with
personalized search results but it appears to have acted
ethically to protect user data from various governments over the
years. Google recently earned a notation from the Thomas
Jefferson Center (http://www.tjcenter.org/#item02) for
"strenuously" resisting the US Department of Justice's request
for user data.

The writing has been on the wall, (or on the server at any rate)
for over two years. After several algorithm changes and a
four-month infrastructure upgrade, Google results are starting
to show the direct influence of its users as they vote with
their mouse-buttons. User-data is an important factor in search
engine placement, making website usability an important factor
in SEO services.
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Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing
expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for
StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine
Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes
the opportunity to share his experience through interviews,
articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at
"jimhedger@stepforth.com"
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