How Important is Avg time on a Website?

Bounce Rate vs. Time on Site
To be completely forthright, Google has never stated whether or not they use Visitor Time (or time on site) as a ranking factor. But Matt Cutts of Google has explicitly said that they do NOT use Bounce rate as a ranking factor.

But bounce rate is not the same thing as the amount of time a visitor spends on your site. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave your site after only viewing one page. Notice that time is not a factor in bounce rate at all.

So, a visitor could come to your site and spend 3 hours reading just one page, but if they click back to Google without viewing a second page on your site, this is considered a bounce. So, while they’ve explicitly said that bounce rate is not used, there is no official word on average visitor duration.

However, as others have said, controlling your bounce rate is still very important.

What is your Average time on your site? If you do not know this answer. how do you know if your website is working for you.