Originally Posted by jetjet

ok, here is a better scenario to illustrate what I meant by this thread....


say there are two identical websites, the only difference between them is google analytics is installed on one but not the other.... by virtue of using traffic data that google obtains from their google analytics program, they give the website that has their google analytics software installed a boost in the SE results (which to me is an obvious conflict... to favor a site over another in ranking results based on whether they have google analytics installed)

therefore to be properly free of conflict of interest they should not use data from user optional programs in their ranking algorithm (it would be almost as bad as giving a search engine ranking boost based on Alexa, just plain wrong)