Google Analytics effect on SERP

[pwrkid]

I have a website hosted on a US server. My target audience is english speaking countries, primarily US.

It is not a high traffic site but it was ranked in the top 3 result for it's niche. on google.com. Most of the traffic is from me and my staff who are all accessing from Australia.

I have noticed recently that we are no longer ranked highly at Google.com but still ranked highly at Google.com.au

A gut feel is telling me that google analytics is having an effect as why else would google rank it high for searches on the google.com.au domain?

I'd love to hear from anyone with experience or opinions.

Is it a bad idea to let google see your demographics?

[earnest]

Google analytics can not have any effect on serps, that just wouldn't make any sense. The phenomenon you are referring to is accounted for by the fact that search results for different google data centers vary since google tries to provide what is deemed relevant to this or that region.

[pwrkid]

You say "Google analytics can not have any effect on serps, that just wouldn't make any sense"

Why would it not make sense? I think it would be stupid of G not to use the information.

I think the more intelligence google can gather on a website the more relevant it can make it's results.

Add analystics to that the information gathered by the browser toolbar, and it gives G a good idea of a websites users demographics, time spent on the site, what pages they spend the longest on based on their searches.

hence my theory that the Australian traffic to my site from me and my staff are adversely influencing Googles perception of what demographic actually find my site more relevant.

[wige]

Personally, I don't believe that Analytics would have an effect on what country the site shows up for, especially if the Australian traffic is just from your company. One of my sites, which uses analytics, had a demographics shift about two years ago when several frequent visitors were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. When that happened, traffic from the Middle East spiked, but this change had no effect on our rankings.

I am sure that Google does use Analytics data, but I believe they use the data at a more generalized level, not looking at individual sites.

Among the things Google will look at when determining what area a site will rank well in are the contact information on the site, the encoding entered in the header tags, the link profile (incoming and outgoing) of the site, and the registration information for the domain name. All of these factors seem to be even more important than the location of the server where the site is hosted. According to Google, there may be many reasons to host in one country a site for a company located in another. For that reason, Google tries to look to other factors to determine where the site is targeting. But I have never heard of Analytics as a source for this information.

[Jeremy80]

I agree with wige. The rankings shift is likely due to Google finding other things to connect your site to Australia. It wouldn't be fair for Google to take Analytics data into consideration for rankings. Then people who use analytics could either be at an advantage or disadvantage. Google wants to keep as even a playing field as possible. Favoring sites with analytics would open them up to all kinds of lawsuits.

[kbeus21]

I think wige makes some good points. I have also heard if you would like to link better in a certain area attempt to exchange links with websites in the country. I am not sure if this works or not, but my demographic is world wide so I really don't pay alot of attention to which countries are clicking on my site.