does google know how many visitors you are getting?

[Tsmash]

I keep reading how you shouldn't build links too fast if you aren't getting many visitors. I see people saying things like "google can tell your links aren't natural if you are getting 25 visitors a month, but you are getting 1000 links a month". How does google know how many visitors you are getting, if of course your visitors are coming from another source?

 

[Lithin]

Mostly through analytics. Also they refer people from google (search) and it would be weird that if they only direct 25 a month to a site via search that it would get 10k direct hits.

 

[Scritty]

If you have site analytics installed they get most of them.
If not they don't. They get their own referrals (people who search for you) and their crawlers seem to gather some info while they are smooching around your site - but they don't get all of them unless you let them. They have no right for a start.

They are just a website, and if you don't invite them onto your site - they can't do a fecking thing about it.

First level of invite is to open your site to search engine crawlers,
Second is to install analytics

If you choose to do that (and have read the agreement) you'll see they can do more or less whatever the hell they want on your site.

 

[scorpion king]

If you are using google products like Adsense or linked your domain to webmaster, they will know how many visitors you are getting. If you are not using any of the google products on your domain, they don't know.
As far i know there is no ratio between visitors and links. what if a new site getting 1000's of visitors from PPC and build 1000's of links a day, they wont get punished?

 

[Exaggerated]

It depends but if you use one services that big G offers, its possible they can. Just like adsense or adwords. Nor analytics.

 

[markhenry121]

google analytics!!Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.

Google Analytics uses a first-party cookie and JavaScript code to collect information about visitors and to track your advertising campaign data. Google Analytics anonymously tracks how visitors interact with a website, including where they came from, what they did on a site, and whether they completed any of the site's conversion goals. Analytics also keeps track of your e-commerce data, and combines this with campaign and conversion information to provide insight into the performance of your advertising campaigns.

All of this information is presented in an easy-to-read, yet thorough manner, through intuitive, visual reports. Google Analytics won't affect the performance or the appearance of your website and there are no extra files to host on your website.

With information from Google Analytics, you will be able to drive traffic more efficiently to your site, and convert that traffic more effectively.

 

[Numa68]

Google can tell how many visitors your site gets not just from Analytics and AdSense, but from the actual clickthrough percentage from their search engine. Since they do like 80% of all searches, it's accurate enough.

Also, links that show up inside of their other services (Gmail, Docs, etc) are tallied.

 

[Typlo]

I would venture to guess that Google could make a pretty good guesstimation of how much traffic a site gets, without using Analytics. Between its search engine click throughs (in light of their known market share in a country), AdSense impressions (discounting disabled JS or adblockers), Google/DoubleClick cookies (which are almost impossible to avoid, unless disabled), the Google Toolbar etc, then finding a median/average, I'm guessing they would be pretty much spot on. Why do you ask?

 

[zombajo]

According to the new google analytics you can do also new stuff like:

[TABLE="width: 560"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 340"]Learn who's sharing your content with
Social Reports Trackbacks
You publish new content, we scour the web for pages that link to it, and we build automated reports for you right within Google Analytics Social Reports. Find it under the Social Sources report, and click on Activity Stream. Trackbacks help you learn which content gets shared, and keep track of conversations generated from those sites. Learn more here[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Google knows a lot more than you think. Of course there are more updates
and new srvices like: [TABLE="width: 560"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 340"]Test and improve your website with
Content Experiments[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
and [TABLE="width: 560"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 340"]Create custom dashboards with the
Easy Dashboard Library [/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
and more.

 

[Scritty]

google analytics!!Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.

Google Analytics uses a first-party cookie and JavaScript code to collect information about visitors and to track your advertising campaign data. Google Analytics anonymously tracks how visitors interact with a website, including where they came from, what they did on a site, and whether they completed any of the site's conversion goals. Analytics also keeps track of your e-commerce data, and combines this with campaign and conversion information to provide insight into the performance of your advertising campaigns.

All of this information is presented in an easy-to-read, yet thorough manner, through intuitive, visual reports. Google Analytics won't affect the performance or the appearance of your website and there are no extra files to host on your website.

With information from Google Analytics, you will be able to drive traffic more efficiently to your site, and convert that traffic more effectively.

WOW - Google couldn't have written an advertisement for themselves any better than that if they tried.
There are alternatives to Google analytics. Might not have the G relatged stats that GA does BUT is far less intrusive.

If you are using Googles PPC adwords - then you really have to use GA - if you're not, then there are plenty of better options available.

 

[Expertpeon]

Google can tell how many visitors your site gets not just from Analytics and AdSense, but from the actual clickthrough percentage from their search engine. Since they do like 80% of all searches, it's accurate enough.

Also, links that show up inside of their other services (Gmail, Docs, etc) are tallied.

It's funny that every time someone talks about google they up their search %. Last I checked it was <70% of total search traffic, which is of course substantial, but not exactly 80%