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That's a great question!

The thing is, there are websites that naturally have high bounce rates and low avg. visit duration time.

One example is Wikipedia: people google "what year did  Titanic sink", get their answer and quit without visiting other pages. Can we say that high bounce rate or low avg. visit duration time negatively affects Wikipedia's rankings? No way!

I think the algorithm Google applies is more complex. The search engine might stereotype the web and assume that in case of insurance websites, for example, visit duration >N and bounce rate

Hi Samuel,

in short, Google Analytics is accurate enough, and here are a few suggestions to address your discrepancy concerns:

1.  The number of visitors you mention is not large enough to make conclusions about the accuracy of this or that tracking system.

2. Google Analytics might not track  visitors if they don't have java script set or if they block Google Analytics. As a result, Google Analytics reports on a fewer number of visitors.

3.  Your affiliate stats, on the contrary, might track not only java script but also robots that index your website. As a result, your affiliate stats reports on a larger number of visitors.

Happy ranking!

Hi Warrantywise and DigiJoltMan,

thank you for discussing SEO SpyGlass, I'm always curious to get fresh first-hand feedback on SEO PowerSuite tools (disclaimer: I'm posting it as Link-Assistant.Com employee).

Here are several things I'd like to sort out for you:

1. "I have been using a free trial of SEO SpyGlass and from what I can see we have a few low value links..."

SEO SpyGlass has no trial, it is available in Free, Professional and Enterprise Editions. You should be using the Free edition, which lists up to 1,100 links per project. Paid versions provide unlimited number of backlinks, often 10k+.

As you can imagine, I can't be unbiased when discussing if the tool is worth itsmoney (yes, it is :)), all I want to say you can't judge of SEO SpyGlass Professional or Enterprise effectiveness from the Free version you're using - the capability is different.

2. "The benefit of joining things like SeoMoz or Raven is that the tools are always improving and staying up to date with the search engines. Where as with software you have no guarantee that the company who made that software will be in business in the future so they will not keep updating it. "

SEO SpyGlass is updated almost weekly - one of the major recent improvements is the addition of our own backlink database. We religiously follow our tools' compliance with search engine updates.

Link-Assistant.Com, the company behind SEO SpyGlass, has been on the market since 2004 and it intends to be there for its customers for years to come!

We have huge social media presence, we're absolutely open to any questions - you're welcome to shoot us those to any social media outlets of ours or through our support.

Hi Samuel,

in short, Google Analytics is accurate enough, and here are a few suggestions to address your discrepancy concerns:

1.  The number of visitors you mention is not large enough to make conclusions about the accuracy of this or that tracking system.

2. Google Analytics might not track  visitors if they don't have java script set or if they block Google Analytics. As a result, Google Analytics reports on a fewer number of visitors.

3.  Your affiliate stats, on the contrary, might track not only java script but also robots that index your website. As a result, your affiliate stats reports on a larger number of visitors.

Happy ranking!