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We recently covered a comment from Googler JohnMu on if click data is used in Google for ranking purposes. Of course, John gave the typical Google response.
But now we have a comment from Matt Cutts of Google at a Sphinn thread, where it appears that Matt has completely denied the rumors that Google may be using click data (aka bounce rate) to rank web pages.
Matt said:
Without reading the article, I'll just say that bounce rates would be not only spammable but noisy. A search industry person recently sent me some questions about how bounce rate is done at Google and I was like "Dude, I have no idea about any things like bounce rate. Why don't you talk to this nice Google Analytics evangelist who knows about things like bounce rate?" I just don't even run into people talking about this in my day-to-day life.
So this seems to me that Google seems not to take into account people clicking from Google's search results to a web page and then clicking on the back button. This is the strongest statement on the topic I have seen from a Googler to this date.
I also recommend checking out HuoMah.com and see his analysis about all of this.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
