Google Toolbar and Web Accelerator’s Role in Fighting Link Spam

Google has amassed quite a bit of user behavior data with the Google Toolbar, and the Web Accelerator will only increase their vast knowledge of surfers’ habits. I would be willing to bet the farm that this will drastically impact their search algorithm soon.

For instance, suppose we’re looking at two Web sites that rank for "blue widget". Site A has 500 higher quality backlinks from related sites. Site B has 40,000 lower quality backlinks obtained by spamming blogs. In the past, these two sites might have obtained similar positions in the SERPs.

But with data collected from the Web Accelerator and toolbar, Google knows that visitors to Site A tend to stay for 3:41 and view about 4 pages, while visitors to Site B stay for 0:31 and view 1.3 pages. Further, Google knows which of each site’s backlinks are being clicked, and which are never clicked by users (hint: the spammy blog comments are rarely clicked on).

When Google fully integrates user behavior data into their algorithm, sites with HQ content and HQ, highly trafficked links will benefit.

DaveN said something similar on this post at SEW Forums:

the way SE’s look at links is changing and changing fast imo If you can
ask yourself will this link i have just added get traffic from people
visiting that site, then you are on the right tracks if the answer is
Yes.

Getting HQ links seems to be the theme of our blog in its initial days