Does Time Spent on Your Website/page Count?

[blitzen]

A potential client said that some search engines, including G, will rank you better if the user spends time on your webpage/s.

Is this true?
How can external sites time the visitor's stay on your website or page?
I didn't think cookies are valid when you're on another website. Can cookies time their stay?

If so, then putting the cartoons, poetry, short quizzes, etc on the website would help keep them around. I started this about a month ago to make the site more interesting that just listing products. If this is true, then I'll hopefully get a second benefit from this.

What do you think?

[Gennady]

In addition to click through rate, visit time was brought up by 'thought-leaders' as an indicator to Google of relevance. This was only insinuated and has not come close to being proven in any way.

At this point in time, I'd say probably not.

[blitzen]

Do you have any idea how a third party can monitor time spent on your webpage or site?

[Gennady]

Hitwise - How We Do It (http://www.hitwise.com/products-services/how-we-do-it.php)


How We Do It

There are three principle ways to measure Internet usage. A panel of users can be measured at their computers with installed software (user-centric), marketers can monitor how visitors interact with a specific website (site-centric), or data can be collected directly from ISP networks (network-centric).

The network-centric methodology employed by Hitwise enables the most efficient way of monitoring of how more people visit more websites than any other way of measuring Internet usage.

Hitwise has developed proprietary software that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use to analyze website usage logs created on their network. The anonymous data sent to Hitwise from the ISPs include a range of industry standard metrics relating to the viewing of websites including page requests, visits and average visit length.

Hitwise also combines this rich ISP data with a worldwide opt-in panel to overlay demographic, lifestyle and transactional behavior across the thousands of websites that are reported on every day.

Because of the extensive sample size of network data, Hitwise can also provide detailed insights into the search terms used to find thousands of sites as well as a range of clickstream reports, analyzing the movements of visitors between sites.

Hitwise collects aggregate usage statistics from a geographically diverse range of ISP networks in metropolitan and regional areas, representing all types of Internet usage including home, work, educational and public access.

To ensure the ISP and opt-in data is accurate and representative, it is weighted to universe estimates in each market.

Hitwise only extracts aggregate information from ISP networks and no personal information is seen or captured by Hitwise in accordance with local and international privacy guidelines. Hitwise's methodology is audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers on an annual basis.