Dunning-Kruger Question inspired by new bot used in march update -- user authentication factor?

[Wayne Smith]

A feature that rushed into the new version of Chrome just before the update was adding a history for 401 Unauthorized -- for failed login attempts.

I'm having a problem understanding how this feature helps people who use the Chrome browser. But subject to Dunning-Kruger, I can see a benefit to how it could improve search results. Clearly, bots have trouble getting past user login scripts -- at least an attempt is made to stop bots. I am never going to look through browser history to determine the sites I failed to login too -- Why record this history?

Maybe Skype's departure may be of interest to Google. Where does the clickstream lead to after Skype sends a user a 401? Do they go to Discord? Microsoft's teams? Where does the user's emergent 301 signal lead too?

I've been on the anonymous user side of user privacy. I don't collect any information about the user (including their name), so I've never sent a 401 unauthorized response from my sites.


Does logging into a site help the site's ranking?

I'm not asking anybody to give away the farm or break the NDA for an enterprise site. But, is my position on user privacy holding me back?

BTW: myactivity [dot] google [dot] com/myactivity?pli=1 provides at least some of your click stream data.

 

[testitall]

Here's my 2 cents. (Keep in mind it may only be worth 2 cents!)

Google is in the business of collecting data about users to improve advertising performance. They do not care about privacy. Chrome belongs to Google. They use it to collect information that helps Google, not users.

Collection of the 401 data could allow them to detect bot networks, hackers, etc. subject to some thresholds. Google has a history of reacting to outliers. Your failed login attempts are low - especially when compared to your total web usage in Chrome. A bot could be detected by having thousands of failed attempts. This could tell them to treat a user, or an IP differently.

I don't know if logging into a site helps its ranking. But in some cases, signals from legitimate users DO impact ranking. Google also treats information differently when a user is logged into Google. You'd have to test to see if it's a factor and how powerful the signal would be.