If you make a living online or if you are planning on making a living online watching and understanding the search engines is a very important part of being able to do so.
At one time links were the big talk of the Internet, however it appears as we move closer to a new year, search engines are incorporating more factors into their ranking algorithm, and one of these is user behavior.

Search engine started out looking at content but it got extremely abused.

Then the search engine started looking at links as an indicator of what was important. It worked and continues to work but links are slowly becoming a less trustworthy indicator due to the massive abuse.

So what’s next?

Bounce rates, page views, brand searches and other indicators can now be a deciding factor in taking the top spot. There are several webmasters reporting an increase in traffic has caused their websites to begin to rank better for certain search terms.

Microsoft has made clear to search communities that they are considering using behavioral data as an important indicator of quality and relevance with the release of browse rank.

The more visitors to a page and the longer a user stays on the page would appear to affect the ranking of the site.

It would appear that when ranking in the top of the search engines you have your own page factors, your link’s, Google raters and behavioral data.
As the Internet changes one of the new factors in ranking in the search engines is keeping users on your site.