Can Google Analytics hurt your SEO?

On the Google Webmaster Help youtube channel, Matt Cutts says that, to the best of his knowledge Google does not currently use ANY analytics data in it’s search algorithm.

Matt Cutts – Can Google Analytics Hurt Your SEO?

Will they use Google Analytics data to improve search results in the future? I don’t see why they wouldn’t at least put the option of contributing that data for that usage.

As far as I know having Google Analytics tracking installed is beneficial to your SEO. It’s publicly shown in your website’s source code that you’re using  Google Analytics, and a website using tracking and analytics software is more likely to be a valuable site, and in it for the long run.

But, if your site has a high bounce rate for example, that is reported in Google Analytics… Google was not aware of your exact bounce rate before you added the Google Analytics tracking code, and after becoming aware of the more detailed statistics I would think Google would want to use it to improve search result quality.

I don’t think Google wouldn’t want to pass up such a valuable source of data, which could definitely be used to improve search result quality.