News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Most tech content is bullshit. Parent comment

Re:Most tech content is bullshit by jason0597 on Sunday June 07, 2020 @04:45PM (#23450648)
A lot of times I middle click any interesting links I find on Google, in which case it becomes hard for Google to know if I unvisited a site. It's not like they can track me clicking the Back button on my browser and arriving back to the search results
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Most tech content is bullshit by bartread on Sunday June 07, 2020 @05:34PM (#23451057)
I've no idea whether they do this or not but it's easy enough to know when a tab or window is focussed or not. I have a games site and use this to pause/unpause games, music, etc.

They could hook this into Google Analytics and subtract the time you spent with that tab/window not focussed from your session duration.

I do fundamentally agree that session duration may not be the worst proxy for worthwhile content or, at least, engaging content, snd I think Google may use it as such.

[ Parent | on HN ]