Google Analytics - In-Page Analytics
-
I had a strange thought waking up this morning, and was curious to hear other people's opinions on it.
In Google Analytics, under Content > In-Page Analytics, Google shows what links on your site pages get clicked and how many times plus other metrics. Do you think they use that data for ranking back links so-to-speak?
What I mean is, say I had a back link to my site on example.com, and example.com had google analytics installed. Google can see through google analytics whether my link has been clicked on. Say that my link gets no clicks, do you think that Google would use that metric against my site deeming it "not popular" or "not a good resource", even if example.com was a very popular site?
And it could work the other way. Say my link got thousands of clicks on example.com, do you think that Google might use that to promote my site?
I couldn't find any other discussion on this anywhere, so am not sure if people have already thought about this.
-
Thanks Jason. I still wonder, though. Google has said one thing and done the other in the past.
This thought jumped into my head because I have managed to land some very lucrative backlinks to my site from several (~25 or so) major players in my niche. DA's of 90-100, and bang on for what I deal in. However, my backlink gets zero clicks to my site which got me thinking that perhaps Google does use the GA data to determine the more popular links on a page. And upon checking, the majority of the sites which my link sits on has Google Analytics installed.
To put it into perspective, the relation between my site to the sites in which I have backlinks on would be like a company who owns a search engine getting a backlink on google.com, or an independent news outlet getting a backlink on CNN.com.
It's been about 6-8 months now since I landed ~80% of these backlinks, but have yet to notice any significant changes in the SERP's for my site. I'm giving Google the benefit of the doubt that new backlinks can take some time to set in, in fear that they're temporary backlinks so as to not reward a site prematurely in case that backlink comes down.
Thanks for the reply!
-
Hi THB,
According to the recent Q&A with Matt Cutts at SMX 2012, Google does not look at Analytics for ranking.
http://www.seroundtable.com/smxadv-mattcutts-15253.html
However, if you're getting a good amount of traffic through a link, I'm sure it may help ranking in a tangential way. If it's getting traffic then the referring page probably has a decent authority so that link is probably worth more for rankings than one from a page that isn't getting much traffic.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why No Goal is recorded in Google Analytics
Hello, I am not sure if i made an error. Can someone please point out. On our sales form, when a user submits the form, the URL displayed is - https://x-y.com/thank-you-2/ I created a Goal like this - 1 ) Under Goal set up, i choose Template option 2 ) Under Goal description, i choose Type > Destination 3 ) and finally, in Goal details field, destination equals to /thank-you-2/ But, no Goal is being tracked. In the first step, should i have selected 'Custom' instead of 'Template' Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Johnroger0 -
Google Analytics - Tracking multiple thankyou pages?
Hi Guys, I want to track email opt-ins for multiple thank you pages. The setup is as follows: http://image.prntscr.com/image/57632e05a15f42fda0b8ffec2d176460.png I have not yet built the thank you pages, so i was wondering what the URL should be to make it easy to track them in GA? I'm thinking: domain.com/thankyou-page/page1 Then using regular expression in GA to track /thankyou-page/ Would this be a good way to go about it? Cheers. f6c7r0
Reporting & Analytics | | spyaccounts110 -
Is Google doing anything about the spam referrer plague in Google Analytics?
My client manages 15+ websites and we have observed the spam referrer issue has gotten steadily worse and worse in the last few months. I took the time to weed out the worst offenders via traffic filters but our referral traffic source garden was quickly full of weeds again a few weeks later. Does anybody know what the Google Analytics development team is doing to combat the spam referrer issue? I find it quite amazing that Google goes through the asinine effort to block out organic keyword data ("not found" & "not provided) but they don't seem to care about blacklisting/filtering spam referrers. RHnE6Wx
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB3 -
Google analytics Goals and Funnels??
Hey - how's things? I've got 2 goals setup, each of which use the same thank you page but with different required funnels. The results have been identical for the last few weeks - which tells me I've got something wrong!! The first goal has a contact form on every page in the /products/ directory set up like this:
Reporting & Analytics | | agua
destination equal to: /thanks-enquiry/funnel step1 page: ^/products/.* required: yes The first goal has a form on 1 page called /on-sale set up like this:
destination equal to: /thanks-enquiry/
funnel step1 page: /on-sale required: yes Any ideas?0 -
Best top 5 actionable insights from Google Analytics
Buongiorno from 14 degrees C cloudy wetherby UK 🙂 With a whole gamut of books out there are written around the topic of "Actionable Web analytics" where you have to wade through chapters of how to suck eggs and how to get analytics part of your business culture (whatever! most clients who look after their websites are entry level Marketing Execs who pay the digital agencies to do the thinking for them) I'd like to cut to the chase and list out say a top 5 of actionable insights a client would actually give the time of day for so heres my top five, whats yours? 1. Landing page bounce - showing them the £5k landing page designed with no conversion thinking is turning off customers
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
2. Synching up PPC campaigns to analytics and showing them how much money they are waisting
3. Goal funnels - Showing them there 20 step shopping conversion funnel gets abandoned at step 3
4. Non brand keyword traffic (although a stack of this gets blocked by "not provided" Big groan...)
5. Event tracking on there 10 page carousel anner showing them no one clicks on banners 2 - 10 So under the strict label of "Actionable data only" from Google analytics whats your best insights you share with clients in the hope that they may actually give data reports the time of day! Grazie tanto,
David1 -
Google Analytics
Is there any way around being able to set up 20 goals in Analytics? What if one of my clients want to set up 10 pages with separate actions to track on each page. Will then each actions count as a separate goal? If this is the case, how could I work around creating more than 20 goals? Would I have to look into hiring/buying a third party or separate software? Your help is greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | flcity150 -
Google Analytics bug?
Hi, I'm getting hits to this page, it's screwing up my Google Analytics stats. I know it's related with Google Website Optimizer, cuz it correlates with the tests I ran at the same dates. I'm just wondering if you've seen this before and what I should do to clean my stats? And is this affecting my SEO? Because it's still registering hits to these pages but I already stopped the tests a while go. Should I disallow this in my robots.txt file? Thanks! ga_bug3.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | rhenster990 -
Entrance keyword for specific landing page Google Analytics V5
Hi all I cant seem to find a way to get Entrance keywords for a specific landing page in version 5 of Google Analytics. Any quick tips? Thanks a million Fredrik
Reporting & Analytics | | Resultify0