Google's John Mueller repeated it, the time spent on a page by your users is not a factor Google uses for ranking. Time spent on the page is not a Google ranking factor, he said, "It doesn't," meaning Google doesn't care about time spent on the page for ranking purposes.
An SEO asked why does Google Search Console Insights not show the time users spent on your pages? The SEO said, "How can Google know how much time users spend on my website? Via Chrome? Clearly Google cares about it."
John replied, "It doesn't -- that's why there's no number."
Here are those tweets:
It doesn't -- that's why there's no number.
— John Mueller is mostly not here 🐀 (@JohnMu) December 13, 2022
Google has said for years and years that it does not use behavioral factors for ranking, outside of any of the page experience system metrics. This has been the overwhelmingly consistent messaging from Google for over a decade, as recent as 2021, 2020 but 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Google said bounce rates are not good signals, in 2008 Google said it is a noisy signal and also in 2008 said click data is not used for rankings. This is a myth Google said but then you have people at Google misspeaking causing more confusion.
So here is the 2022 version right as we close out the year and head into 2023.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
