Found this article which brought up some ideas on Google's future.
http://www.articlealley.com/article_16285_6.html

In short, it says that Google analytics has given this free tool so that they have full access to all your site stats. Is this considered a good thing.
Do SEO's want google to realise the exact state of their website. Will optimisation be distroyed as google will have all the information about this site already.

Are the benefits of this tool outwaying the negatives?

Thought it would be an interesting topic for discussion.

I don't think so -

Even if google has a very good idea of what your site is about there are still ways to optimize it and make sure it is relevent.

I always bring up this example, but I did SEO for a heating and cooling company in my home town. There website, even though it was MOST relevent to Ann Arbor, mentioned Ann Arbor maybe twice on the whole page.

People who went to the site probably saw the url on a truck, or e-mail, etc, so they knew it was in Ann Arbor, but the search engines didn't.

Google analytics wouldn't be able to figure that out.

BTW - Does anyone have any invites for analytics? I would like to try it out.

I would never use google analytics as to me its a good way for them to spy on you and they can reall check on your website the only thing I let google do is spider my page and thats it.

Why let a search engine no all your stats?

I recently got an invite to Analytics and so far I'm liking it a lot. I'm still familiarizing myself with it, but it offers so much more than any of the other free stats packages I've been using.

Ross I think the only way to get an invite to it at the moment is to submit your email to Google and wait. I submitted a few times actually and it took about 2 months before the invite came through. Here's the invite request page.

madkad I can understand what you mean about giving Google all the extra information and I thought about it before accepting the invite. In the end I wasn't really all that concerned with what Google knew about my site. I thought what they were offereng was a greater benefit to me than handing over the info. Most of the more comprehensive stats packages are hosted on someone else's site so to use them you're generally letting someone else have access to your stats.

I do think Google is currently trying to collect site info as a way to determine rankings. I've seen many suggest they're trying to move more toward a visitor centered approach in determining what sites to display for a search. Something along the lines of if visitors to your site for a certain keyword phrase are staying longer on your site than another site after clicking through on the search then it might mean your page was more relevant to that search.

That's just some stuff I've been reading. I don't think there's any evidence one way or the other about it. More just the latest buzz though Google and Yahoo and MSN certainly have enough ways to collect info about us to do something like that. It's not so much personal info, though I'm sure they can get that too, but rather some overall statistics they can record about search behavior.

Well put vangogh. Can you send me an invite. my email is mohamoud1(at)gmail.com

vangogh - Ok thanks for the heads up.

I submited and invite request awhile ago, but for some reason thought it might be like gmail where users can give invites to other people.

I seriously doubt that google will start lowering page rankings based on using analytics. Seems like a sure fire way of shooting themselves in the foot for that package.

I think it is more along the lines of figuring out ways to improve their current programming.

I don't claim to be an expert but Google is a multi-billion dollar company that wants to sell adspace for top dollar ( What else do they sell? Their stock... ) while paying publishers as little as they can.

One site's statisics are worth relatively nothing. When you collect as many as you can get your hands on you have something. The trade is that Google wants to make their product more competitve ( to make more money ) so they'll let you look at the statisics you gave away. I think that Google should pay for information that technically enriches them ( Who found your site & where, how long they stayed, What keywords found your site, Where did a visitor go after leaving your site etc. )

Everyone should read Google's Terms and Conditions (I quit Adsense after diligently reading the TOS) and think "Is what's best for Google best for me?" or "Do I really trust a corporate entity to not make a profit for my sole benefit?"

Ross, I don't think it is, but I'll look through everything they sent and see if I can invite anyone. I think the invites were necessary because when Google first launched Analytics their servers couldn't handle the initial wave of people signing up so they made people sign up for an invite instead.

I think I submitted my email 3 times over the course of a couple of months and then about 2 weeks ago finally got the invite from them. I have to admit I wasn't expecting it by then.

The idea behind Google using traffic patterns came from this thread on another forum. I think it's possible they may try to use traffic data as one ranking factor if they can, though how much weght they would give it I have no idea.

I'm with you in that I don't think Google will be modifying rankings a lot based on your use of Analytics. And if they wouldn't it make more sense to give you a ranking boost. I'm sure they're trying to collect as much info as they can about everything where the web is concerned and may have no ideas at the moment what they would even use the info for. Maybe just to improve current programming like you said.

Skorch, I think Google is giving me something back for any information they're now able to collect from my site. They're giving me that same info. I know there are better stats packages out there than Analytics, but Analytics is much better than anythng else I currently have. What they're offering for free many are charging quite a lot. I assume Google like all other companies are out to make a profit. Isn't that kind of the point of being in business.

i don't think google analytics killing seo

We were one of the lucky ones to get in there and actually get 4 sites under analytics right away before they started accepting only limited applications. From our experience, I do believe our PR has decreased because of adding one of the sites to Google analytics. However, we also did nothing else to promote the site and the content stayed relatively the same over the same period, which is perhaps why the PR dropped as well. But I always felt Analytics had something to do with it...call it a gut feeling or what have you.

Overall a great topic, btw.

I would tend to doubt adding the site to Analytics hurt your PR. More likely it was just the recent algo update. A lot of sites lost PR as they always do. Maybe just a few links got discounted. I don't think Analytics is really going to have any affect on PR or ranking, but if anything you'd think Google would give you a boost for using their product since they obvously want you to use it.

I'm still learning what I can do with Analytics, but so far I'm liking it.

I really don't think that google will use analytics for the purposes of ranking sites. However, I do think they will use it for the purposes of detecting click fraud.

Nice topic.

In my opinion if google has full view of your stats then that will mean they can see all of the traffic you are receiving from their search engine and OTHERS, with this information as well as the information the Googlebot brings back they most certainly can and more easily make their search engine more human edited, because its easier when someone gives you permission, than them manually doing searches themselves and seeing what sites should be listed where. It makes it alot easier for them.

Also what it does is since they most likely spider your site and know the linking structure and everything else, they will also see what traffic you are receiving from other search engines and how much. With this information they can actually use it to determine other search engines Algorithms.

For example, if you are receiving a decent or any traffic from MSN for a specific keyword set, then they can go to msn and see where you rank in the search listings, then they can take all of the information that they gathered from their analytics and along with the information the Bot gives them they could use that to determine MSN search engine algorithm. They can also use it to adjust their algorithm's.

Maybe far fetched.....but maybe not.

Interesting thoughts SEOclown. I'm thinking with all the data about traffic patterns they'll be collecting they'll be adding something to the algorithm. I don't know that it will be a major overhaul, but maybe part of future algorithms will be to see how long people stay on your site after finding it for a particular keyword.

If I and others search for 'blue widgets' and spend on average 10 seconds on the page that's ranked #1, but spend 3 minutes on the page ranked #3 and also click around the site spending a half hour totalt there then maybe Google will give a boost to page #3 in future searches for 'blue widgets' given that visitors seem to consider it more relevant to that keyword phrase.