No and heres why:
1) The search engines dont have access to the data they would need to use this
as a
ranking factor. They do not know how much traffic a web page gets, as
it is not publicly available, and thus cannot use it to determine its rank. (For
those of you who want to say, "But there is Google Analytics", that service is
used only by a small percentage of websites and unless every web site decided to
use it on every web page the data is far too incomplete to be used this way).
2) It would be a self-fulfilling prophecy if the search engines used its own
SERPs as a means of determining its search engines results. Obviously the number
one
ranked page for a search is going to get more traffic than a page not
on the first page.
If traffic was the indicator of where a page belonged there would be little or
no way for a page to ever move up simply based on the fact that the pages ranked
higher would be receiving more traffic from the search engine based on the mere
fact that they are
ranked higher.
3) Traffic volume can be manipulated.
Spammers and black hats could easily write bots to artificially inflate their
page views and thus their rankings. Plus you can purchase traffic from traffic
providers or buy expired domains and redirect them to your site. It would just
be too easy to do.
(I can also see newbies hitting refresh for hours on end....)
4) Traffic is not an indicator of quality content. It is only an indicator of
good marketing.
