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Bounce Rate as a Ranking Signal

10/31/2007 by 37 Comments

I received an e-mail from a reader who was interested in a post talking about bounce rate, and how that might be used by search engines as a possible ranking factor. The concept is that a higher bounce rate would be seen as an indication that a site is of relatively poor quality. For example, does a bounce rate of more than 70% mean that you have a bad site? That’s pretty high, right?

Bounce Rate Definition

First let’s start with a definition of what it means. There are two possible definitions – one is how long the user spends on your site. For example, if they are on the site less than 15 seconds, it is considered a bounce. The other measurement is the number of page views by the user during their visit to your site. For example, they see only one page and leave.

Your analytics package uses the page view approach, because they can’t measure time on site, because they don’t know how long you spend on the last page you visit. A search engine, however, does not know how many pages you visit (unless, using Google as an example, they leverage the Google toolbar or Google Analytics data), but the search engine can tell if you did a query, went to a site, and you were back at the search engine doing a query again 5 seconds later.

So what is an acceptable bounce rate? As with everything else on the web, the answer is that it depends. For example, if you have a reference oriented site, and the user gets the answer they are looking for as soon as they get to your page, they may simply leave. This is an example of a scenario where the fast exit from your site is actually an indicator of quality. The user got what they wanted very quickly.

Do search engines use Bounce Rate as a Signal

Do search engines use this as a signal? It is certainly possible that they could. They all have the ability to collect data by various means. They certainly have the ability to see how long (or short) the interval is between visits to their search engine. I asked the question of Matt Cutts and all Matt would say is that the signal was potentially a noisy one, meaning that it would be prone to error.

If they do use it as a signal, various types of filtering would need to be applied. For example, you would want to look at classes of sites in the same category as one another and compare their bounce rates. If Ford Motor Company has a higher bounce rate than General Motors, that might mean that the GM site is a better site. However, you would not want to compare the Ford Motor Company site to the Amazon web site. Their businesses and web site goals are just too different.

Another things you can do is look at many different signals together. For example, you look at bounce rate, and you look at bookmarks, you look at social media tags from sites like del.icio.us, etc. Each signal by itself maybe noisy but you don’t treat any one signal as an indicator. Instead, you look at the cumulative weight of all the signals together. In other words, if one signal says something negative, it doesn’t really matter. If 3 signals all look negative, you now start using it as ranking factor.

My sense is that bounce rate is something they use in a filtered manner, perhaps as I have outlined above. It does provide information, but it must be used judiciously. When signals like this are misused it can lead to lower index quality. All of the search engines want to highest possible quality index, because that leads to market share.

Don’t forget usability

Last, but not at all least, don’t forget about usability. High bounce rate may be an indicator of usability problems on your site. If you have a 70% bounce rate and you may be able to do things to make the site more functional for users, you may be able to lower the bounce rate to 60%. This could lead to a 33% increase in conversion – which is not something to sneeze at.

The usability perspective is the best one to use in evaluating bounce rate. You potentially get two wins for the price of one. More visitors from search engines, and a higher conversion rate. For that matter, a more usable site is more likely to get tagged more often on del.icio.us and other social book marking sites too.

Filed Under: Search Engine Algorithms, SEO

3 Surprises in the Google PageRank Update

10/29/2007 by 15 Comments

Now this is beginning to look like a complete update. Previously on Search Engine Watch I reported that many new pages that had been added shortly after the last update had not been updated. Now those pages are beginning to show PageRank. Clearly this is a general update.

The big news remains the apparent punishment in PageRank terms of sites which are selling links. What surprises me about this is not that Google did this, but three other things:

  1. It surprises me that they missed so many sites that are obviously selling links. I am aware of many, many such sites that monetize their sites in that fashion, without NoFollowing their links. Given the set of sites affected, it really does seem like the punishment was manually selected.

    However, that makes it even more curious when you consider that influencers like Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal were selected.

  2. It surprises me that they punished sites that sell links, but clearly labelled them as Sponsored, or as Advertisers, or some other equivalent. Google will never win that battle. Monetizing sites is something that every site owner has the right to do. Such a small percentage of site owners even know what a NoFollow is, that a policy of punishing people on that basis does not make sense to me. Besides which, can’t Google detect these types of clear labels and simply discount those links algorithmically?
  3. It was also a surprise that there was no apparent impact on traffic. This was reported by both Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal. So given the broad swipe that they took at sites as mentioned in point 2 above, I suppose that this is a good thing. But simply altering tool bar page rank in a way that does not impact traffic will get them nowhere.

    The link selling market will continue to thrive without PageRank. At this point in time, selling links is more about Anchor Text than PageRank. Nothing in this update has changed that.

I think the right strategy for Google is to focus on the sites that are clearly being manipulative, and implement penalties on them that include an affect on traffic. Then Google should be able to address people who clearly label their sold links as ads algorithmically, by simple discounting their links. Sure this may be subject to error, but I would think that the outcry on that score would be far less significant than what they generated with the approach they used.

Filed Under: Google, linkbuilding, SEO

Problems with Anchor Text as a Ranking Signal

10/22/2007 by 4 Comments

Periodically you see articles that talk about what the most important are for search engine ranking. One of the really good ones is the SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. Nearly every such article identifies anchor text used in links to your page as a major ranking factor. For example, only one factor got a higher score then anchor text (Keyword use in the Title tag got a higher score).

But there is trouble in Wonderland. There are problems with placing a lot of weight on this particular signal. Here are two of them that the search engines should consider when they are using this signal:

  1. Natural linking behavior to a site places a heavy emphasis on the name of the entity owning the site, or the site name. For example, if your company is Acme Amalgamated Corporation, many of the links to your site will use the anchor text “Acme Amalgamated” or “Acme Amalgamated Corporation”. The good part of this is that it quickly makes it likely that you will rank for your own company name.The bad part is that it gives a site that uses a major keyword phrase as all or part of their company name, or their web site name, an unnatural advantage in ranking for that keyword. Other webmasters will link to the company by their name or web site name, without considering the search engine ranking impact (nor should they have to).In essence, these links help such companies rank more effectively for such major keywords then they should. In my opinion this could be a significant source of error in search engine rankings.
  2. The weighting of anchor text is one of the biggest factors that drives the paid links business. When you pay somebody for a link, you naturally expect that you will be able to control the anchor text. So here the search engines truly hurt their own cause. Want to put a dent in the paid links industry? Reduce the importance of anchor text.The challenge for the search engines may be that the use of anchor text has enough other beneficial affects that reducing the weight of anchor text may do them more harm than good.

This illustrates one of the problems with search engine ranking factors in general. I would suggest that they all have problems of one sort or another. The complexity of this is that the search engines need to cross reference different signals and use them as checks against one another to make everything work. Hopefully, they have their arms around item 1 above, but it still seems to me that I see sites ranking unnaturally high based on their site name.

Filed Under: linkbuilding, Search Engine Algorithms, SEO

Live Search Local, Maps, and Mobile

10/11/2007 by 1 Comment

Today’s post will cover the Local, Maps and Mobile search presentation made by Microsoft at the Searchification event on September 26, 2007. We have also written a post about the Core Improvements in Live Search that you can also read.

1. The presentation was made by Eric Jorgensen, a 13 year veteran of Microsoft:

Eric Jorgensen Picture

One of the first things that Eric spoke about was Local Search, and the prevalent nature of local searches:

Local Search Queries

As you can see, the data shows that local search queries make up a huge percentage of total search. For that reason, Microsoft is investing heavily in its local search product offerings. Here are some of the key investments they have made:

1. Microsoft is striving for clear product leadership in maps and driving directions. To aid in this, they have assembled a database with 50M exact business latitude and longitude codes. They are striving to provide the simplest and most intuitive driving directions, and the most accurate geo-coding and relevance. Here is a look at the new interface:

Local Search Results Screen Shot

One of the coolest things that they are doing with this is that they are integrating real time traffic information onto the map. Using color coding, you can see where the traffic jams are, and you can get alternate directions to get you around those jams. That was pretty cool functionality.

Microsoft’s Virtual Earth was already innovative, but they are working on expanding its functionality, and depth of coverage at a rapid pace. They currently have built 3D maps for 150 cities, and are looking to have 500 completed before the end of this year.

Microsoft is also offering a powerful B2B Map Platform. Their stated objective is to become the leading location platform on the web. Currently this is in use on over 1300 major web sites. Only Mapquest has more, and they are just a little bit ahead of Microsoft at this point. They are already seeing 1.9 Billion transactions per month through this platform.

Next up was the mobile search product. Microsoft sees mobile search as enabling the next generation of location based services. They are working on operator partnerships and have on in place with Sprint, and Orange in Europe.

One nice thing is if you have searched for a movie theater, and then search for sushi, you will get the most relevant results close to theater. On a Sprint phone, or a phone with bluetooth GPS, the results will provide turn by turn directions. You can also get imagery of the location, so you can see what it looks like, right in your phone.

Microsoft also offers integrate voice activated search powered by TellMe. This is awesome functionality to have, because it eliminates all the hassles with typing on your phone when you want to do a quick search. The catch, of course, is how high the quality will be in processing the voice commands.

They will also be offering 1 click directions for any location. What this will do is show the directions from all major arteries, so you don’t have to enter in a starting address. This will come in really handy as it again lowers the amount of typing you need to do:

Mobile Search 1 Click Directions

Eric felt like there were 3 reasons why they have done so well in recent reviews of mobile search products:

  1. Strength of the UI
  2. Mobile search functionality
  3. Voice Activated searching, using the TellMe technology

All in all, pretty interesting stuff. I think it’s smart for Microsoft to focus on establishing footholds in various vertical search areas. Combined with an increase in core web search relevance, it gives them a chance to increase their market share.

Filed Under: Microsoft, SEO

Discussion with Matt Cutts

10/7/2007 by 26 Comments

During my recent trip out to California I had the opportunity to site down and speak with Google’s head of the Webspam team, Matt Cutts. It was enjoyable to chat with Matt, and you can see a transcript of the Matt Cutts interview here.

The major topics we covered were:

  1. Google’s tracking of Javascript encoded or redirected links
  2. NoFollow, NoIndex, and Robots.txt
  3. Hidden text
  4. Signals that Google can use to rate site quality, other than links

Check out the interview, and if you would like to comment on the post, you can do so here.

Filed Under: Google, Matt Cutts, SEO

Core Improvements in Live Search

10/4/2007 by 6 Comments

This post will provide some more info on the September 26, 2007 Searchification event that Microsoft put on. In particular, this post will focus on the core search engine improvements part of the presentation. I will provide some brief comments on each announcement, as well as pictures of the speakers.

1. Introduction by Brad Goldberg. Brad Goldberg, general manager of the Windows Client Product Management Group at Microsoft, who manages the search team from a business perspective, started things off for the event:

Brad Goldberg

Brad spoke about data that indicates some of the basic problems with search. For example, 40% of search queries fail to provide an answer, and 50% of these queries require refinement before an answer is found. People find that getting what they want requires a high level of cost and commitment.

One of the more interesting things he spoke about was the search market data share data from comScore:

Engine Users User share Query share
Live Search 69M 37% 11%
Yahoo 104M 56% 23%
Google 142M 77% 56%

Based on this data, he stated that Microsoft’s focus is on getting more repeat queries from their user share, or doing a better job of delighting their current customers.

2. Overview by Satya Nadella. Satya Nadella, Group VP, Search and Advertising Platform Group, was up next and dug into a bit more detail about Microsoft’s areas of focus for this update:

Satya Nadella

Note that one of the comments Satya made in a pre-show discussion I had with him was that the Microsoft infrastructure is finally getting caught up, and this is enabling them to do much more with their search product.

The last major update that Microsoft did was in September of 2006. Microsoft has been doing rolling updates through the year, including a number of performance and relevance changes. In this release, several of Microsoft’s search products were affected:

  1. A major update was done to the web search index
  2. Maps
  3. Mobile Search
  4. Shopping Search
  5. Health Search
  6. Image Search
  7. A Microsoft Video Search Product was Announced

Here is a screen shot of one of Satya’s slides:

Diagram of Updated Areas

Next up was a summary of customer feedback:

Microsoft Customer Feedback

The data in the above pie chart was based on an analysis of user click behavior. The sidebar point about relevance was based on an analysis of over 10,000 feedback submissions.

Given the preponderance of concerns about relevance, Microsoft did some further research to get a better understanding of the nature of the relevance concerns. This broke out as follows:

Microsoft Relevance Concerns

Based on what Microsoft learned from these analyses, they invested in 6 major areas:

  1. Coverage – They increased their index size from about 5B pages to about 20B pages
  2. Query intent – Making a better determination of what the user is really looking for
  3. Query refinement – Determining how to refine a query to provide the user with better results
  4. RankNet improvements – A variety of tweaks to Microsoft’s Neural Net algorithm to improve results
  5. Structured information extraction – Doing a better job of using structured data bases to improve relevance
  6. Rich answers – Incorporation of blended data from verticals, such as image and video search

For those of you who want a brief definition of what RankNet is, you can see it here:

RankNet Overview

Demos of Improvements. At this point in the presentation, Ramez Naam joined Satya to run some live demos:

Ramez Naam and Satya Nadella

Ramez demoed a variety of search queries and their results. Here are some of the queries that were demonstrated:

  1. EPRML – Microsoft did not show acronym based answers before, and now does. They also only showed about 1,700 results for this query previously, and now show more than 10,000.

    2. the office – search engines normally strip off “the” from this query, but many users are actually looking for the TV show. This now comes up in Live Search results.

  2. c.n.n. – Live search used to look for “c n n” after seeing this query, but now it knows to look for CNN.

    3. IL soccer – The new Live Search understands that in this query that “IL” means Illinois.

  3. Groig Freiderich Nicolai – Live Search now auto-corrects this query to “Groig Friederich Nicolai”.
  4. China – This search shows off some of the rich media integration, as well as the “Related Searches” functionality at the top right of the results screen.
  5. Volkswagen Kaefer – Shows a German page, which probably is the best result for most users. The page can be translated on the fly, and in fact, Live Search offers a mode in which you can see the original German version and the English version side by side. You can also modify how this works using on screen controls.
  6. San Jose weather – now shows the weather right on the screen. This feature will be live to the public soon.
  7. San Jose traffic – You now can near real time traffic info right there on the screen.
  8. MSFT – Provides an intraday stock chart, along with pricing and volume information on the search results page.
  9. Barack Obama – News results are integrated in for those queries where that would be relevant.
  10. space shuttle videos – Video results are incorporated directly in the results, and you can play the videos inline on that page.

This is a sampling of some of the more interesting queries demonstrated during this part of the presentation.

Ultimately, the objective of this effort was to increase their search results relevance. Microsoft then did some testing with live human subjects to assess relevance. Each participant was trained on how to assess relevance. They had this group do a large number of searches and presented them with results in format where they did not know which search engine the results were from.

Net-net, the results of this testing showed a dramatic improvement in Microsoft’s relevance scores. Here is a chart showing the details:

Search Relevance Scores

In summary, it is clear that Microsoft made a lot of improvements to their core search results. The real tale of the tape will emerge from tens of millions of searches done by real users. That said, a number of different issues were presented, and Microsoft has addressed them, so this presents good progress.

The other concern I would have would be is whether the underlying strategy of trying to capture more market share from their existing users will work. After all, is the reason they capture the initial search, but not the follow-on searches, simply because users know which search engine they already trust?

This could provide some resistance to getting comfortable with Live Search results. However, I can tell you that I am more intrigued by Microsoft’s improvements and Live Search then I have ever been. I know I will be doing some testing of it on an ongoing basis.

Filed Under: Microsoft, Search Engine Algorithms, SEO