Does Google use Google Analytics information in its search algorithms?

Question

Does anyone know whether Google makes use of the information it obtains via Google analytics in ranking of search results?

Does it, for instance, make use of the bounce rate for a page given a certain search term? If you have a high bounce rate (information Google would not have been able to obtain without Analytics), would this negatively impact your ranking?

This is especially relevant to me, since I'm running a web application that has only one main page. Therefore, users might stay on that page for a long time, but the bounce rate will always be close to 100% - that's not something I'm able (or willing) to change.

Answer 1

Here's Matt Cutts on the Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel.

"And the one word answer was: no."

Answer 2

I highly doubt it. Since not only can stats be faked and manipulated easily with bots but since only a small percentage of websites actually use Google Analytics it means they would have an incomplete set of data. Sites that don't use it and are doing poorly would have an advantage of sites that do use it and do poorly since Google would only know that the site using GA is actually doing poorly.

Keep in mind that this doesn't mean that Google doesn't mine that data to learn from it. I am sure they use it help them figure out how users are using websites which helps them refine their algorithm and I'm sure they use it to help improve their ad networks.