Since last December's admission from Google + Bing's search teams regarding the direct impact of Twitter + Facebook on search rankings, marketers have been asking two questions:
- What signals are Google + Bing counting?
- How much influence do these social signals have on the results?
Over the last few weeks, we've been collecting data and running calculations in an attempt to provide more insight into these answers. Today, I'd like to share some results of that process. But, before we begin, there's some important caveats.
The data we're sharing below examines the top 30 ranking results for 10,217 searches performed on Google in late March (after the Panda/Farmer update, using top suggested keywords in each category from Google's AdWords data). It compares the features that higher ranking results have, which lower ranking results do not. Since the standard error numbers are very, very tiny, we can be fairly confident that these correlation values would apply to Google results as a whole (i.e. if we were to run these correlations on 100K, 1 million or 1 billion results, we'd get the same correlations).
However, this does not mean we can be confident that what we're measuring are actually ranking factors having a direct influence. Let's use an analogy about dolphins to help illustrate:
image credit: alfonsator on Flickr
Thus, our first caveat is - correlation is NOT causation - the features we show below may indeed be directly influencing Google's ranking algorithm, but they also may just be artifacts or features that high ranking pages tend to have (though, we do know from their public statements that at least some data from these sources is influencing the results).
It's also true that our analyses will not be nearly as sophisticated as whatever Google + Bing are doing with the data, so while we look at raw numbers from APIs, the search engines may have arrangements enabling them to look far deeper into the signals that make a tweet or share authentic - in particular the "author authority" metric they mention in the linked interview above. Thus, the second caveat is that results presented here are likely overly simplistic. A big takeaway for marketers should, thus, be - even if you're sure that a social metric is highly influential, spamming the heck out of it is probably a dumb way to try manipulating the rankings.
With those out of the way, let's look at some data!
Correlation of Link Metrics vs. Social Signals
How well do metrics like the quantity of shares on Facebook, Tweets on Twitter or Google Buzz shares correlate with higher rankings in the top 30 results in Google's web search results?
In June of 2010 we ran a similar analysis and found the highest correlated metrics to be exact match .com domain names and # of linking root domains to the ranking page. Exact match domains have fallen substantially (in both prominence and correlation) - but we'll save that analysis for another blog post - while link metrics have remained fairly static in their correlation to higher rankings in Google. As of late March, the data is showing an unlikely new leader - shares of a URL on Facebook!
Naturally, this data shocked us. I presented at SMX Elite in Sydney last week on this and, prior to showing the slide, asked the audience, by show of hands, who believed Facebook to be more influential in Google's rankings than Twitter. Not a single person raised their arm. When data's this surprising (and particularly when the rest of the data from the analysis - much of it available here - matches our expectations), we want to look deeper.
Is Facebook Share Data Available for Enough Pages to Be Significant?
My first reaction was to ask Dr. Matt Peters, SEOmoz's in-house data scientist conducting this analysis, if the results were skewed by a few search results where Facebook shares just happened to be present in the top results. His response...?
More data:
Link data was present for nearly every result we examined (99.9%+), which is to be expected, but social data? Of this magnitude? Even for plenty of weird, uninteresting queries? Shocking. If you had asked me to guess, I would have said we'd find Facebook share data on maybe 5-10% of the results - 61% is mind-boggling. It challenges a lot of my assumptions about how far social data really could take web search (e.g. see this video from April of last year in which I proclaim there's no way Facebook search could replace Google search), especially considering the relative newness of Facebook's Open Graph project.
Are Social Correlation Merely the Result of Overlap with Link Signals?
My next guess was that Facebook Shares' correlation was simply a matter of being a good predictor of links. Surely, pages that earn lots of Facebook shares also earn lots of good links. As before, Dr. Peters had some analysis to help answer the question.
In this chart, we examine the correlations of social data, controlling for links (in this case, specifically # of linking c-blocks). And yet, we still see a remarkable positive correlation between Facebook shares and higher rankings. Twitter, on the other hand, drops dramatically, potentially signalling that its influence as direct signal may not be as strong (though we must keep in mind this data is not causal).
Takeaways from this Data
While we can't say for certain whether these numbers mean that Facebook strongly influences Google rankings, I personally have some big learnings and opinions to share:
- Social Metrics are Well Correlated with Higher Rankings
To me, correlation alone is interesting because I want my sites/pages to be similar to the pages that rank higher in Google, irrespective of whether those traits are directly measured in the algorithm. Pages that earn tweets + Facebook shares also correlate well with earning links, and send direct traffic on their own - ignoring these services at this point seems foolish. - Testing the Direct Impact of Facebook Shares on Google is Imperative
We've already observed several remarkable results from testing Twitter's impact. Facebook should be next on the list for many search marketers. - I Need to Learn More About How to Earn Facebook Shares
Given the potential importance and the obvious direct impact (traffic from and visibility on Facebook itself), I, and probably many web marketers, need to examine successful strategies and brainstorm new ways to earn sharing activity from Facebook's massive user base. - Shares Might Be More Valuable than Likes
In Facebook's own environment, a "like" of content will show up on your own "Wall" and in "Most Recent" (a new feature as of last week), but it rarely shows in "Top News" where most users scan and click. If that alone isn't reason to encourage sharing v. liking, the data above certainly is (at least to me). - Twitter May Be Less Powerful than I Thought
The correlation data and the presence of tweets in SERPs was less, in comparison to Facebook, than I would have expected. It could be that in cases like those of our experiments, where many influential Twitter users shared a URL in close temporal proximity, Google takes it as a signal, yet for standard search rankings, it's not as powerful. We'll definitely keep testing and watching, but my expectations for tweets correlating with rankings, after controlling for links, were higher, and thus the results, somewhat surprising.
It's up to you how to interpret this data, but whether you believe (or have tested) the causality of Facebook/Twitter or not, all of us in the SEO sphere should be carefully watching the social space and Google's social efforts.
For those interested, here's the full presentation on correlation + opinion data shared at SMX Elite last week:
Looking forward to a vibrant discussion and, hopefully, some testing (and reports back) of Facebook's influence on Google's rankings :-)
p.s. When the full search ranking factors report is released in the weeks to come, we'll also be providing our methodology and a raw dump of data so anyone can reproduce and double-check our results.
Hi Rand,
my consideration is going to be totally unscientifical but based over industry weights and mass penetration factors.
If we use those two "metrics" we can find a logic and a justification to the higher correlation of Facebook Shares (but also Likes, from what I see) over Link in Tweets.
About Twitter: probably our vision of it's importance was conditionated by the fact that Twitter is "the social media of Tekkies". But I want to underline what you say; that probably it counts especially when links in tweets are related to proved influential profiles. Somehow, as it was a way to confirm the trustness of a link, more than its popularity.
Finally a first reflection about what all this could mean on a industry level:
While I agree with most of your post, I must disagree with your final point that Google needs to be a generator of social signs.
Google's remit is to provide people looking for content the most relevant results. By your rationale Google should also be producing more websites itself so those sites can appear in it's own results, something I am sure would be frowned upon.
The interconnection of websites, either by straight links or API/data feeds is what actually helps Google to be successful in what it does - collect, analyse and rank information.
BTW, great article Rand
Probably I was not able to explaim myself well :).
I am not meaning Google must produce social signs for its own properties (I mean, it does not need to promote that way them, as they are filling quite a lot the serps).
I was meaning that it has to find finally the right key in order to enter in the Social Sharing arena. In this sense this explain the +1 invention and the recent bid on Twitter.
The reason - and I'm not talking about pure business reasons related to ads market - is simple: it is better for Google to receive the same amount of social ranking signals now FB now is producing (and its influencing the SERPs) from a directly controlled source than from one that it cannot control and could change how those same signals are functioning.
Ahh, sorry Gianluca
I understand you a bit more now and agree that Google shouldn't rely purely on Facebook and Twitter for it's social signals.
I still would not want Google, the providers of search results, to also be the producers of content. For example, I am more than a little uncomfortable with their owning of Youtube and then presenting their own website results in the SERPS, in another industry it would definitely be investigated for monopolisation.
I think the big point you hit is influential users. Search engines have acknowledged that not all user accounts are given equal value (just like not all links have equal value). There are two main reasons I think Twitter is showing less signal than Facebook:
1) As you mentioned, the size of user base plays a role: Facebook much larger and hits a wider demographic. You would never find most of my friends and family on Twitter, but all of them are addicted to Facebook.
2) Twitter has more fake accounts than Facebook. From a spamming perspective, Twitter is much easier to spam than Facebook. Just create a spam account a tweet trending topics with links, and you’ll get dozens of clicks, good or bad. Facebooks has way for spammers to really get in front of a large audience. Furthermore, spammers could make Twitter appear to share and discuss a wider range of topics than it really does. This likely explains why Twitter’s signal strength is diluted compared to Facebook. Since Google/Bing consider user authority, the many twitter spam accounts may be downplaying twitters effectiveness within its relevant niches.
I can't say how much I appreciate that you (and everyone else at SEOmoz) bother doing this much data analysis. Showing the social data correlation for link data is so much more useful than just raw data. Most other blogs would be happy to serve the raw correlations with the highest possible numbers to get some buzz. I guess it's just the overall trend of the media these days.
I secod thogenhaven's comments - without this depth of research we'd really be in the dark on much of this. Controlling for links on the facebook shares correlation is probably my most "penny drop" moment in the post. Awesome!
I have a theory as to how Google can be using social metrics not to increase a page's relevancy but to validate it.
Think of something like lawyers, cabinet makers, treadmill reviews, carpet manufacturers and millions of other niches that will never get shared on Facebook or Twitter. Yes, occassionally, but by and large you aren't going to see people share a link to the website of the guy who just installed their new cabinets.
As others have said, Google surely takes niche into account. My guess is this: social metrics are used to merely validate rankings. So while the links game has been played and manipulated for years, the social game has not. So if Google determines a top 10 for a search query, I think they then compare that top 10 to the social metrics they keep. Does everyone have Facbeook shares and Tweets except for the one that was #1? Then there's a good sign #1 manipulated rankings signals to get there.
And if they determine a top 10 and show that almost none of the URL's have Facebook shares or Tweets, then social metrics probably don't count for nearly as much. So I think this data is causing a shift in the rankings because pages that Google thought were relevant don't seem to be as relevant when put to the social test.
But watch out, as someone mentioned, go Google "buy facebook fans" or "buy tweets" and you will find more than enough fake accounts to suit your needs. It's only a matter of time before 50% of all social media users aren't real people.
Interesting thought on Google using these signals for cross-validation. What if a site suddenly gets a ton of new back-links but has no tweets or FB Likes/Shares? In 2011, that would seem pretty unnatural. Eventually, these signals may not operate as independent ranking factors so much as a sanity check on each other.
I think validation is always going to be a challenge for Google and any other search engine, one great example (and horrible one) is the article that the New York times posted a few months back [article - https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html google's response - https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html]. But will services that twitter offers as far as the verified accounts, I could see twitter surpassing facebook as a validation signal.
The really big question worth looking at is how Google/Bing are taking "personal authority" into account. There was some mention that they don't count all users equally, and as they have more data, it should be much more difficult to fake authority.
That was somehow told in the famous interview by Danny Sullivan, and by Bing. They told him that they take into account some Twitter Profiles as Authorities on specific topics; for instance the Danny Sullivan one about Search Industry.
It's logical, because - using that example - he is the Expert on that topic. And that means that tweets by Danny about other topics could be weighted less.
And I would wonder if Google doesn't follow the same philosophy somehow.
Well, that is at least how I understood from the interview ;)
Hi,
do you have the url of the famous interview by hand?
Thanks,
This is exactly why I've asked Mat Clayton to talk about engineering social media at Boston Pro seminar - he's worked out better than anyone else I know how to go about getting FB likes and shares. I think you'll like that session, Rand.
I believe Rand's article diaplays that social media's influence is real and growing. Here's an excerpt from a presentation I wrote back in January about social media and it's potential impact on search engines. From a logical point of view, social adds value to search "information" through "perspective" - and this will only get stronger. When you add "information" and "perspective" together you get "insight." And, insight in the next level of what search can provide because there is a value judgement on the information.
Section 3 – Why Social is Potentially Better? Facebook is the only company that Google fears – why is this? Search Engines return “Information” based around their ranking algorithm Social provides a perspective or an opinion on information from a network of trusted friends When you layer perspective on top of information, you get “insight.” Ultimately, every searcher is really looking for insight – not just information. Social creates a scary combination of information and perspective in one place. Is this why Facebook just raised $500M to create its own search engine? While anything that has the ability to make money will be “gamed”, social media is a harder place to game the system. Relationships must be authentic Power is in the hands of the consumer: stop delivering relevant, interesting, timely and credible information and you will lose the relationship. It’s not just a numbers game…it is a quality of interactions game. Personal hypothesis: In time, social media will replace links as the major ranking factor in the SE results
If you're interested, you can read the whole social media article.
No matter the impact on SEO, social media is a great marketing vehicle for any brand or company. This alone justifies the investment, but when you layer the future on top, you better get busy.
Ok I just looked through the slides and have a very important question Rand: did you look at social signals by URL or by domain? I noticed that Amazon and Wikipedia each appeard in 27% of the search results you examined. Did you merely see if amazon.com or wikipedia.com had tweets or shares? Or did you look at that exact URL which was ranking?
Also, did you look at the number of tweets, shares and likes, or was it a simple matter of they were present or not present? I think it is one thing to say that the 19 out of top 30 (62%) which had Facebook shares had an average ranking of 11 while those without shares had an average ranking of 23. I think it is another to say the top 3 results all had 5x as many shares as any other URL in the top 30.
Hi Rand heard very good things about you at SMX Sydney from colleagues, they all said you are a very nice guy =) Unlucky for me I was way to busy with client meetings to attend =(
I find that Facebook shares are easy to acquire in specific niches but in other niches like Tech/SEO for example Tweets are the favoured thing by users.
I have one website where a single page has around 1k FB shares and only like 25 Tweets, it is a clear indication that that niche Facebook works well.
I have tested soo many different things with social sharing and it is funny to see people who still say "only rely on links" I mean come on links are still great but social is deffiantly here to stay and if you don't embrace it you will be left behind.
I agree--If Google wants to effectively incorporate social signals in their algo, they will need to account for different niches and their preferred social media channels. I'm curious to see the role of LinkedIn, especially as it relates to "brand authority".
Great insight about Linkedin. Looking forward to the SEOmoz team investigating this aspect as well.
I just searched for 'buy facebook likes' on Google out of curiosity and guess what the SERP is full of businesse selling fakes likes, fans, shares, tweets...... If likes are going to be the new links, i really don't want that to happen as getting them is easier than building domain authority through expensive quality links with the perfect anchor text. I wont be surprised if tomorrow Google set up guidelines against paid likes/shares and Rand start telling us "buying shares is not a good long term strategy. I sometimes think, can handful of Google engineers will ever be able to beat the collective wisdom of hundreds and thousands of search marketers around the world?
Great article, though there is a question we have about recent changes Facebook is making on their system: The Facebook Share Button no longer exists. Beyond that, a look into the Facebook Developers page notes that the share function will disappear altogether in favor of the Like Button. What do you suggest would be the correct route or strategy considering these new developments?
It's hard to say. But there still is a difference (in the eyes of Facebook and Google) between a share and a like. In my opinion a share probably carries more weight.
With regard to shares correlating highly with rankings, I have to think that shares would also correlate very highly with number of inbound links, which we all know is the biggest factor for rankings. So it could be a situation where the causation is masked by the metrics you are testing. Sure, there's probably some part of the algorithm that takes "likes" and "shares" into account, but I would really love to see some testing on shares correlating to inbound links. I'd bet almost anything that this is the case.
In a nutshell, if something is heavily shared, it will most certainly be heavily linked to.
Day by day the value of Socail networking increases. The 2011 SEO future graph gives a clear view about it. Today people are more internet savvy, a huge percentage of them are font of FaceBook. So this day is not too far when traditinal backlinks have no value..........
I have seen first hand my sites gain rank from social media alone. I think it helps to get a little sharing off the bat. People see something has been shared and they share it too.
I'm interested to know if the feedback percentage is also considered by search engines. For example, I have a facebook page with 10,000+ followers and a recent post had 21 people liking it and 5 comments. Although that seems active, its only .35% feedback which brings up the question, if a post / link / facebook page has a low feedback rate, is it still considered relavent?
That's a really good point! You would think that this would be an ideal way for search engines to determine relevancy and quality! It would be interesting to know more about this but I suppose only time will tell!
Great Article randfish.
I am currently doing an anchor text linking study to a specific interior page and have used Twitter in one part of the test.
I tweeted 3 times over a period of several days. No change in the search results for the kw phrase.
I tweeted and asked my followers to retweet. I only had 26 followers, but followers of followers were 58K+
Immediately (within hours) of my retweet request the target page rose from #24 to #1 in the SERPS. It stayed there for 9 days and dropped to #24 again.
I will try Facebook shares next.
Reg
nbs-seo.com
Hi,
yes, that makes senses, that this kind of links, helps for ranking in an instant moment.
Do you have made a test with facebook shares?
Thank you for sharing.
Greetings from Hamburg,
www.suchmaschinen-experte.de
From tests we ran - twitter really had almost no influence.
We did a contest and we had about 200 tweeters link to us ( not the most popular people but definitely not spam accounts. Just normal people).
All the tweets were the same and the text was very short (maybe 6 words) where 2 of the words was a keyword we wanted to rank well for.
After a month it had zero impact. I was really disappointed actually.
I strongly suspect this still obtains today. I'm a fan of Twitter, but my guess is that it does more for indexing speeds than for rankings even today. I think Google has probably put all their chips into the G+ bowl. We'll see, but that's my suspicion.
Day by day the value of Socail networking increases. The 2011 SEO future graph gives a clear view about it. Today people are more internet savvy, a huge percentage of them are font of FaceBook. So this day is not too far when traditinal backlinks have no value..........
I suspect that we techie types overestimate the influence of Twitter. On a couple of my recent projects (that aren't SEO or UX related), I've been amazed how much more traction I've gotten from Facebook. I'm not sure if mainstream topics just don't resonate as much on Twitter or if Twitter has simply become saturated with links.
I've recently done some correlation studies on the sum of FB shares, likes and comments with Revenue using Pearsons Two Tail model.
The correlation was extremely high. In fact I have never seen such high correlations in all my studies. They were ranging on various samples from 0.86 -> 0.98
Obscenely high I have to say.
It raises many questions and perspectives on the relationship between our Trust with FB and Purchase Behaviour.
Perhaps because of this fact alone, we are talking more than correlation when it comes to FB's influence on Google Rankings.
Here's the thing I don't understand about this. Facebook Share is being phased out for Like as is:
https://www.socialnomics.net/2011/02/28/facebook-kills-share-button-enhances-like-button/
So I'm assuming this is based on the old version of Like, which did not function similar to Share. But going forward, shouldn't the correlation for Share = correlation for Like?
That's what I thought, too. The FB api documentation doesn't even talk about Share anymore. Everything is a Like button.
Although Facebook messaged it that way, likes and shares are still very different. Shares actively appear on the walls of your friends in "top news" - likes almost never do. A share is clearly a more active, promotional activity (and a rarer one with many URLs). From a search engine standpoint, clicking the "like" button is far different than actively sharing a URL, and I wouldn't expect the new Like behavior (which is more "share"-like, but not fully a "share") to change that.
It actually depends on how the Like button is implemented.. If you use Javascript SDK implementation of the Like button, the Like together with og details will appear on your Wall and your friends news feeds.
In addition, if you provide the option of a comment pop up when clicking a Like button with SDK, then whether you comment or not, it is guaranteed to appear on your Wall and your friends news feeds.
The bonus of this is that one can Share your Like. And this is where FB also capture Share data in their FQL Tables.
Thanks Rand for this fascintating post. It seems like this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to learning about the effects of social sharing on SEO. Looking forward to reading about some strategies for enticing fans to share links on FB.
PS. I think we are about to see a number of articles about "sharebait."
love the sharebait!
Hello,
this looks quite interesting. Please correct me if my thinking is wrong here, but a correlation of < .3 isn't particularly convincing?
Thank you,Shaddam IV
As I understand the data, a correlation of for example .20 means that this signle factor can explain 20% of the rankings in the SERPs. i think that's huge. I also think it's huge if a single factor can explain just 10%.
If you get a ranking factor that is weighting 10% right and your competitors don't, you have a huge advantage in the SERPs.
Hi Guys
I think (although I did a search engine couldn't find it) in a past post by Rand about similar data it was mentioned that the correlation without the decimal point squared was a good way to judge what % of the algorithm an individual factor would make up.
So a factor with .2 correlation would make up around 4% of the algorithm. Which would be a substantial ranking factor.
Thanks
Mark
You are right - see the bottom of slide 10 in the slidedeck
one thing to try is Trunk.ly for finding those past links/posts easily, follow Randfish
The industry is still at the experimental stage when it comes to social signals infuencing search as the algorithms itself are still in the process of being updated and applied.
yes, shares are valuable than likes as shares have an option and the user takes the decision to select the sharing platform. Likes are limited to Facebook only. Well thats what I think as the user preferences are being monitored more as a focus rather than the sharing platform.
When it comes to Twitter it is I think the URLs which are shared on tweets which get retweeted more and are tweeted or retweeted by authority accounts is what matters more. Currently, Twitter may be less powerful but gradually once the algos are set and the link data from platforms linke trunk.ly or similar such databases give signals and act as a resource to search then the rankings should be affected and such tweets should also appear in search.
Currently we are at a stage where social media should be used effectively and should try out all options of sharing like posting a tweet, or retweeting and also engage in conversations related to our industry and try to establish a social account for our company which in future should be considered as a resource and an authority.
Facebook may have the quantity signals but yet I think the quality signals will come from Twitter for search.
Very well put. Twitter is in a growing out period and the spammer algo will need to be tweaked no doubt. FB is no doubt valuable but I have to believe that these numbers are due for a correction. For instance the Social graph as a whole as opposed to FB accounts alone.
Fascinating. My next question would be, if it's true the Facebook shares/likes affect search results, does that mean it's just a factor that can improve the ranking for the shared URL for the given keyword, or does it mean that it actually gives the URL itself more juice that passes to the links on that page, helping your whole site and not just that page?
Sorry I missed the SMX elite event but, Rand when is the Linkscape data adding a social metric to Mozbar data set?
After chatting with our Google rep it seems that FB shares have much more SEO weighting than FB Likes and similar. This is due to a replication of the link to the page, so essentially, organic link building. Similarly to retweets, its a physical replication of the original posted URL, meaning more inbound links, meaning more overall linkjuice.
This wasn't stated explicitly, but what I tried to figure out from the somewhat cryptic explanation.
My view is that Google has given more weighting to the large social channels and more power to NoFollow links in general. I don't believe that a social user's authority (in the case of how many followers they have, etc) has much to do with its influence on links posted, except for the fact that authority pages are more likely to get RTs and Shares due to their numerous followers, and authority pages are more likely to have more inbound links, meaning more baseline link juice in the first place.
Wow, Excellent post. This article is really very interesting and effective. I think its must be helpful for us. Thanks for sharing your informative. https://bestsocialplan.com/buy-facebook-likes/
The rise of the Likerati.
I am little bit confuse with Slid no. 9 & 10 at bottom of blog post. What is HTML Correlations? And, how can I utilize it for my website? I just want to know detail about it with specific process & create one thread on SEO Chat forum. BTW: Great strat with Twitter & Facebook + finish with ranking factors.
Hi Randfish,
Question: as you have Open Site Explorer, can Seomoz make a list of all "linked to" urls and count
1 - the number of C-Blocks linking to each url (I guess this is readily available)
2 - the number of links coming from facebook.com to each url (this would probably take some processing)?
I think it would be interesting using this data to look at the following:
a) How many "linked to" urls also have a link from Facebook? 5%? 20%? 60%? Would be interesting to know that number.
b) What is the correlation between the number of C-Blocks that link to a url and the number of facebook links.(i.e. if you have a 1000 C-Blocks linking to a url, does that also mean a 100 shares on Facebook (or whatever number))
I raise the point as you mentioned FB had a 60% presence in the querie results. If (a) would be a mere 5% and (b) would be low or no correlation, then it becomes very likely FB is influencing the ranking.But of course there are many outcomes possible.
Hope this contributes, and thank you for the article.
The whole social links thing is really still in it's infancy and they have to be careful not to make the same mistakes they made with links and pagerank. There is no way these spam accounts can have any value and it has to be easy to assess the value of a user by looking at amount of followers, value of followers, follower followed ratio etc. If users have google profiles listing there twitter accounts as well they can pull much more detail.
I see twitter as being more useful so find the facebook thing interesting but as mentioned above, due to the closed nature of facebook it's not quite the automated spam fest that twitter has become in some areas.
Great post, although the lower weight in Twitter can't really be much of a surprise to anyone. Twitter has become saturated with bogus accounts, created for various motives. One of my clients is a unique content creator, and they showed me an interesting phenomenon. When they tweet "movie review (name)" of a popular movie, that article will instantly be tweeted by 26-40 twitter accounts. Not their tweet retweeted, but obviously a system of accounts (whose names are all very similar) pushing that article out. Each tweet will take a 'snip' of text from the article tweeted, usually different opening sentences of paragraphs. Very strange, especially when I watched it happen in real time. I rely on Twitter for news/updates, but I follow less than 100 accounts, so it's easy for me to find value. I almost never search Twitter for information, simply because it's too saturated with crap.
Randfish: What I was curious was, what about Youtube/videos? If someone shares/likes/tweets a youtube video, and on that videopage includes a link back to the original article with the video embedded, does that carry any weight at all, or is that treated the same as sharing a page with a link to another page? I ask, because with videomaps, some of my SERPs show up in both WWW, and video, on the first page (same content).
Facebook code question: We have two choices for Like buttons, FBXML and iframe. I chose the iframe version since it would be self-contained, rather than piling still more JavaScript on the visitor. Does that matter at all?
And looking at the Dev site @ Facebook, I noticed that some extra text has been added to the Like Button home page. The FBXML button “always gives the user the ability to add an optional comment to the like. If users do add a comment, the story published back to Facebook is given more prominence.”
With the tweets, is there any consideration for the value of that user? Or is just pure volume? Obviously, volume is not a great indicator and may not give the full picture but with facebook, surely volume is all you have or at least there is less you can do to assess someones standing within a topical niche.
It makes sense that Facebook shares count more than tweets. It seems that it's much easier to setup a new twitter account and abuse it then it would be to do that with another facebook account.
Hi Randfish. Great article and great discussion on the future of social search rankings. I noticed that you used Topsy as a resource to pull influential data for this piece. I work on behalf of Topsy and wanted to let you know that we're happy to pull any additional Twitter information for you either now, or in the future. Let us know if we can help and thanks for using Topsy!
Google and Facebook have to be collaborating behind the scenes. Why else would Google give FB so much power? Otherwise it's a strategic business error IMHO.
Great research overview. It will be interesting to see how quickly this state of play will change again.
Incredible data! I truly believe that this data proves without a doubt that twitter is a pointless and overvalued social media property. Facebook is obviously the future of social search and sharing!
Good analysis, Rand, but I'd like to tell also that every target (purpose) is supposed to be reached for visibility: for social I mean MONEY.
No money, no party: and what will it be when, with all the world crisis, money will finish, and SEO market will be prisoner of an enormous box full of offers and services, but no demand?
Very good post. Love to read these blogs. Helps new user like me.
Fantastic analysis, Rand. Interesting to see how this applies to Latin America, a place where the SERPs are still primarily saturated with exact-match keyword domains and paid links. Thanks for the details in this report!
This is very interesting. I think twitter is a fantastic thing but if google starts to consider it when ranking sites doesn't that just mean people are going to be sending spammy tweets all the time, eventually ruining twitter?. At the moment I get great results from social media marketing let’s just hope they don’t ruin it.
Cheers,
Rafael
[link removed]
Please can someone explain what c-blocks are?
I think they are ip addresses that are in the same range.
I still do think that SMO is helpful in SEO. Social media sites provide no-follow links which are not credited by Google. But if it really does, then it's a good news. It's like hitting two birds in one stone.
I agree these are playing a big role in ranking - but since things like "shares" are automatically appended with a rel=nofollow and Google claims links with this markup have no impact on search results, is it safe to assume that for social links the rel=nofollow does NOT disqaulify it?
The lower Twitter correlation makes a lot more sense knowing now (early July) that Google just let their Twitter deal expire. Makes me wonder why Google factored in Facebook and not Twitter ... was the user activity between the two much different or more valuable or did they view Twitter as a business partner they couldn't build upon. My guess is they view Google 1+ as very similar to Twitter so the partnership didn't make sense.
If Google wasn't significantly leveraging Twitter, it will be interesting to see correlation 6 or 12 months from now on Google 1+.
Hey Rand,
I was bumping my head on how to increase social activity on a client's site for a couple of hours (and a few dozens of queries) when I stumbled upon this analysis.
Reading through this data really made me wonder on two things:
Cheers
Great article randfish. I like how you provided actual data to back your findings. A lot of writers need to follow this premise to strengthen their arguments whether they’re right or wrong.
I’ve always wondered about the impact of Twitter and Google on SEO rankings. As with most people, I’ve assumed that Twitter has had more impact than Facebook. But it could have been due to my favoritism of Twitter over Facebook. So it’s a little surprising to find out that there’s a remarkable positive correlation between Facebook shares and higher rankings and a dramatic drop for Twitter potentially signaling that its influence as direct signal may not be as strong. But again, the data provided is correlation, not causal.
What I found interesting is that Facebook Shares might be more valuable than Likes especially considering that Likes seem to be more popular among users. Over time if this proves true, I’m interested in seeing what Facebook will change/modify/update to make it easier or emphasize the user of Shares over Likes. All in all, I’m interesting in learning more about the impact of Facebook shares on SEO
The most important thing learned is that social metrics are well correlated with higher rankings. For website owners who want to drive more traffic to their site, it’s better to earn Tweets and Facebook shares than trying not to. Why not if it helps drive traffic to your site?
Thanks for the good read!
fgfgsfd
I just loved this blog, i too feel the same that the google ranking is very much based on FB, Twitter and G+ popularity of your website
How has that evolved since April last year? Do you still feel the social signals, tweets especially, have still a strong impact?
Hi,
i am not doing analyse which social media platform are doing the best, but of course, social media are getting more and more weight in one search engine optimization campaign you want lead to success.Take care of google+, facebook and twitter and add your local and niche relevant social media segment.
Greetings from Germany,www.websiteoptimierung.de
Thanks, this post is very helpful. I've been educating myself on SEO lately, and I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge. Keep it coming!
Really great posting....it is useful for beginners in SEO....Thanks for such a great information
You can call me names or point fingers at me or whatever but I say Facebook shares vs likes are still a thing to do with links - just the "special" kind of links that Google is so crazy about these days. Whether a page is shared or liked a link is added to a person's wall - the more shares or likes the more links. True, they are both nofolow, but so are e.g. Wikipedia links - yet being mentioned in Wikipedia is still a good signal last time I checked. However, a page can be liked only if it has this FB button on it (and how many of them in your data sample have them?) and to share a link, anybody can just post one to their wall.
So... The data above was produced because we had precisely the same intuition - that Facebook "shares" and "likes" might only be highly correlated with rankings because of their power in predicting links. The "controlling for links" chart above shows that's not the case. There may be other factors that overlap (maybe it's just great content and Google is really good at measuring raw content quality from on-page analysis?), but links probably aren't the reason (I won't say 100% because our index isn't perfect, though it's likely a very good representation).
In terms of percentage of results containing this data - that chart is also above in the "precent of queries in which the feature was present" and you can see that it's surprisingly common to have FB data in the serach results.
Yes I agree with your opinion that the number of Facebook sharing and likes are directly corelated with ranking. Because good qualty backlinks get back to your site.........
I just wanted to point out the following:
This is why I love SEOMoz community so much!
PS: We're testing the Facebook share at the moment and measuring for impact. Will publish and share our findings in a month or so.
I find it interesting that there is a value difference between a Facebook share and a Like. I feel like most companies focus primarily on getting the most Likes they can. While that is a good goal, I always wondered what real value there was in those Likes if people weren't returning to your page. I can see how a share means more.
Some great data analysis here, Rand, and I think it's awesome that you have a resident data scientist.
Awesomeness aside, I think it is interesting how Facebook Shares and Likes *seem* to have different ranking weight, and Twitter is not as influential as we might have thought.
From my own personal observations, I've seen Twitter helping with indexation (i.e. when I publish a new article and tweet it immediately, it gets indexed quickly. If no tweet, then it takes longer to index), so maybe Twitter helps on the front end (and can drive traffic to an extent), but Facebook is more long-term helpful.
I wonder if this could be tested somehow?
Once again, thanks for this post.
Rand, could you just show us the causation? Thanks. :)
I'm really surprised by Facebook being potentially more influential than Twitter. Why is that? Is it because Twitter's audience is skewed towards marketing and tech and thus doesn't represent the opinions of the masses? Is Facebook a better cross section of search engine users due to how ubiquitious it is? Or maybe it's because Facebook has a stricter policy on profile creation and is tougher to scam as a result. Any thoughts from the SEOmoz community on this question?
As I wrote in my comment it is because of it's mainstream nature.
And about harder to play as a system... I won't be so sure.
I'm sure someone will always find a way to game the system. Good call on the demographics assessment.
For US alone estimates put Twitter at ~7% of population and Facebook at ~40% of population. Obviously the Twitter number has a faster growth rate and could easily have doubled by now, but that Facebook number is astonishing. If you discount the very old, the very young, etc, almost everyone in the entire country is on Facebook - at least, almost everyone that gets online and uses a search engine is also on Facebook. That's not just a representative sample, that's like the actual thing. It's not quite true of Twitter yet.
Yes its true, but this ranking or this position is occur for a rare time not hold position for long term its depend on sharing link on social media
Intriguing post. Thanks Rand. Of course Google would have to count Facebook more now that we're using Twitter...grr!! Just kidding. I find Twitter a more useful curation tool, but I get why Facebook might be weighed more heavily (as joshuahedlund said above, many more people use Facebook than twitter).
This is awesome! I love when you guys come out with the rankings factors. I'm glad to see that exact match domains won't have so much importance (they can be annoying to compete with). When are the official ranking factors from SEOmoz coming out? I am anxious to see it.
Once again, great stuff Rand.
Hi,
Thanks for a great post, but this well researched with some proper statistics.
I am pretty new to this game, but please could someone explain the mechanisms by which Google is acquiring data from Facebook' social graph? It seems to me that this could be potentially on a par with Bing monitoring Google earlier this year. Is this happening via Chrome and the Toolbar?
Are there other things going on behind these correlations that may improve page rankings?
kind regards
Eric
Fantastic research, particularly the efforts to isolate causation from correlation. The finding the Facebook carries more ranking weight than Twitter seems appropriate given how promotional Twitter has become. It has become commonplace for social medai gurus to have over 1,000 Twitter followers and utilize automated tools to blast out dozens of Tweets daily. While there certainly is spammy activity going on with Facebook, the ratio of true social interaction to promotional activity is much higher than with Twitter. My personal behavior of allowing the folks I'm following on Twitter to blast me with unlimited Tweets, just as long as they don't unfollow me, while unfriending anyone that abuses Facebook posting seems to have been incorported into the ranking algorithm.
We have at least one client that we need to persuade to place more focus on Facecook interactiveness. Glad I'm awake at this early hour to give this the read it deserves.
For me the key takeaway, is that I need to learn how to engage on Facebook for my clients brands. 'Doing' social media in the right way is going to massively important - in a way that is innovative, adds value to a users 'Facebook experience' and does not end up harming the clients brand. Brainstorm ahoy.
Great post (and one I immediately forwarded to my CEO). I do the tweeting for our company and this really goes a long way to validating not just the work I do, but the fact that I should be doing it. Just hope our ranking improves as our klout does.
Lately I've bee seeing how usefull Twitter can be. I think it's great that Social Media is making a dent in search results. I think backlinks are going to take a back seat to Social Media in the future.
Guess we will have to wait and see.
We recently started an experiment on some long tail but haven't seen any improvements. We'll continue to push likes + share purely as a marketing platform in any case. We've only been pushing for a couple of weeks so my guess is it's way too soon but we're recording more data and will hopefully see some sort of interaction soon. On that it would be great if Open Site explorer started recording Likes+Shares for URL's or had some data in the Campaign manager. I'm also unsure about how Google will handle relevance with likes and shares, it's like a link with no anchor.. On another note setting a minimum threshold for social signals is (currently) a brilliant way to eliminate spam.. Perhaps they are more of a trust signal.. This website is 'verified' so I'll give the other signals (links, content etc) more credibility..
Thanks Rand for your post and insights but also for sharing your deck.
I have one comment and one follow up question.
We released less than 4 months ago a large new site with matching .com domain with more than 1,000 pages of optimized & targeted content and we are clearly seeing much higher rankings for the pages/posts where we have the highest amount of share/like/& comments. 95% of our top3 position rankings are associated with highest volume of social signals. It does appears that there is a minimum # of share/like/comment before it has an impact.
That leads me to my question, how can Facebook comments can be seen as influential when i believe Search engines can't actually fully crawl them? (if i am wrong please let me know). Additionally, links are still a huge driver of rankings but at the launch of a new site how would you value links compared to social signals?
Thanks again
Interesting breakdown of the data here. I would like to see further how content that is both highly tweeted and highly facebooked (like or share) compares to other content in terms of rankings. i.e. does a strong signal from both significantly impact the overall ranking (the old 1+1=3)?
Also I'd be interested to get some thoughts on what the search engines are interpreting as a signal about what the contnet is about from the social space. For example a "like" does not tell us that this content is about cars or trucks, only that alot of people liked this page. This seems like it would leave the search engines highly open to spam tactics.
Also while Google says +1 data is not used, I'd be interested to see if there is any emerging corolation there.
Lastly for the twitter corrolation to links, I'm assuming that links from tweets on other sites that may syndicate twitter feeds were filtered out, and if links were filtered for links are we looking at only follow links, or nofollow and 301 redirects as well?
awesome analysis! great work rand and dr. peter! this is what i am looking for..
We love twitter. We like FB. That said, this is just round 1 in the Social signals challenge faced by Google and Bing. I have to believe that a holistic approach to social would be more profitable Social Graph and ranking wise for business looking to hit their targets. Obviously everyone is on FB, but are they there to buy or bs? As consumers become more and more savvy as to the ways of the Internet marketers will this become easier or more difficult as the flood of ads encroach on their space to communicate? Will they go elsewhere? I have to believe that there will be a dark horse social platform to emerge that addresses these problems from the beginning. Can you say Google? They seem to have hit a profitable mix with the SERPS and Adwords. can they repeat that with a social platform? These are very interesting times. Thanks for some nice data Rand.
I think the data looks right. I use the Google API for similar analysis for all social media channels
You can also get a great feel of social graph connectivity and earned impressions from shares by scooping this data
The key is ensuring the website benefits as well. Unless you tie the website to the interactions online, you miss out on valuable signals.
There are some simple solutions I have here.
More interesting data to fuel this debate, but where do Matt Cutts' and Amit Singhal's statements fit in around a month ago covered at https://searchengineland.com/lessons-learned-at-smx-west-googles-farmerpanda-update-white-hat-cloaking-and-link-building-67838?
I always assumed that Twitter was more important than Facebook in terms of SEO. This is awesome.
SEO requires so much time, right now, that the best way to have a good SEO technique, is to create really good content, targeted to your ideal clients. That's it, Google finally is making its Guidelines a mandatory issue.
Superb factors.. Thanks for Sharing..In recent time Google considers the social links very agressively.. So Social Media Marketing and Branding in Social Media sites became the first priority..
This is great info... I thought twitter was pretty strong, considering after creating accounts, it would start ranking within a day, but will surely try sharing on facebook much more now.
I have a couple of questions. When you say FB shares, are you talking about sharing content - a video, a post, a status update, or what have you - from inside Facebook, using the +share link? Or are you talking about sharing content outside of Facebook - like on a personal website - onto Facebook? Or both?
My understanding is that any publicly "shared" URL on the web pings the opengraph API with that data, though it appears to us to be anonymized (so Google wouldn't know "who" shared it)
Social Media Metrics Are A Big Waste Of Time For Buying And Shopping Indicators!
I am reading about Facebook and Twitter metrics and all that, but is there any data on just the estimate of what the the total combined profits would be from the advertising alone. I mean besides the power of branding and shooting off something virally and a host of other positive things social medias accomplish, somehow I am thinking the very lowest metric, rather better terminology would be "more disappointing," would be actual purchases through click-through banner & text advertising.
The social nature of Facebook is that the average user has 130 friends, according to Facebook. This is the same approximate number of a combined class of his high school mates. So the intense personal nature is that. I have yet to see many product endorsements on Facebook from "my" friends. They do, every once-in-awhile, but very little, as compared to just real life minute-to minute experiences. Even then how many of your facebook friends rave about their new purchases, new TV or stereo they just bought? This is not Facebook or Twitter mentality. So far, I think it's a failure in the business arena for what it could be if tweaked differently. I have ideas, anyone else?
Gotta love Twitter. In the travel industry we all follow each other and tweat our deals. When is the last time you bought travel services or products from a competitor? When is the last time you logged on to Twitter in hopes of finding a hotel deal? See the problem?
My point is what is the point of all the Social Media Metrics when the buyers are not there? Please don't get silly and say they are. Of course they are. Just not in interesting enough numbers to make the ROI worthwhile. My humble opinion based on observation and experience!
Great article though, I am just a little disillusioned on how to best use social medias for my travel companies, other than branding.
We have a client - a hotel - which routinely sells hotel rooms on both Twitter and Facebook. In consistent numbers, month to month, with a positive ROI. People are looking on Twitter and Facebook all the time for travel deals. And when coupled with other marketing tactics, such as toolbars, mobile, and email newsletters - you can get some satisfying ROI from social media.
If you PM me, I'd be glad to share more.
I think you are applying standard, linear and temporal seach metrics onto social media. I believe social interacts differently with the consumer. The beauty of the web is that we can see very linear paths of ad spends to conversion – the transaction. Unlike traditional media (newspaper ad) that is difficult – if not impossible – to accurately measure, the web provides that clarity and we've become very comfortable with that linear path.
Sure, it's always about the sale. But, Marketers must change their mindset and wrap their arms around this thought: the world is changing from "Transaction" to "Transformation." What I mean by this is that Social Media is about a transformative relationship – a valuable conversation with a trusted friend or company as opposed to simply "the peddler of product." Social is about being top of mind when the purchase is ready to be made. Just because you are ready to sell, doesn’t mean that “interested” customer is ready to buy. But, deliver valuable, credible information and you’ll at least be in the ballgame when the time comes for a purchase decision. It’s called developing Goodwill.
Remember, by it's nature, social involves two entities: a sender of information and a receiever of information. If a potential consumer gives us permission to send them information, that doesn't mean they're ready to buy right now. It just means they're interested: interested because a friend mentioned us, a trusted colleague or through a search. And, just because we put out the coolest information/promo/offer doesn't mean they're looking at the screen in that moment. The more active they are means the more competing attention they'll have on the screen. But, if we build upon the trust they initially gave us, we'll be in the conversation when they're ready.
Being active in social also means that our customers and potential influencers can speak on our behalf. AND, I would hazard a guess that linear, faster sales come as a result of our customers that tweet or share their experience about our company much more so than us pushing information and deals onto potential customers. How else can you be "top of mind" at all phases of the buying process? Checkout tools? Packing Slips? Follow up emails?
Here's an exerpt from a presentation I did back in January. It offers that we may need to change the metrics in which we view social media success.
Section 6 – Success in Social Like any aspect of your business, you should have metrics that are relevant to your business. Here are some examples of ways to track your social media metrics. If you are not measuring the results of your efforts, you cannot refine and ensure you are meeting your goals. Remember, Social Media may not be Linear to $$. Perhaps you should consider other methods (attributes) to value your work. For instance, if a Social Media campaign results in 50 new friends and 50 email sign ups, but no sales within 7 days how would you value the campaign? If we only value it against traditional linear metrics, it will come up short. But, if we twist our head a little bit, extend the timeline and think about ways in which it WILL contribute, we can better evaluate the impact. Always be on the lookout to cultivate followers and conversations – but only with relevant customers. For instance, I’m sure that some people may have “Liked” my Soccer Classroom page or Twitter profile from my presentation – but really unless you’re a soccer coach or player, it won’t matter to you or me. I can’t deliver you interesting information. Opportunities during the checkout process or the after care of the product…product feedback…packing slips…how else do you touch your customer? Tag your Social Posts to track Interactions back to the site – this way you can measure your Social Media interactions
The one thing that I've wondered is how search engines handle privacy regarding facebook. How is SEOmoz measuring the number of shares/likes on Facebook as well.
It seems to me that Twitter has a much wider range of "power users" vs spam or casual users. Since both Google and Bing have mentioned they take personal authority into account, perhaps generating high personal authority on Twitter requires more than Facebook?
Either way, these findings are extremely fascinating. I’m looking forward to more raw data and the SEO ranking factors report.
Our data (and what I think the engines and measuring sites like https://www.sharedcount.com use) comese from Facebook's open graph API and Twitter's free API. The engines are likely paying for the higher volume versions, but I don't know to what extent they may get more data.
I noticed that for many very popular, older articles, the retweet count was reset to 0, but all the Facebook activities were still fully available.
From what I could see, older articles that were still getting new tweets did not lose their count, but if there was nothing new for some period of time, the count reset.
Also, there are dozens of different ways to tweet. From what I can tell, sharedcount is missing some of those. It would be interesting to see how much more accurate Google's data from the "firehose" is.
Great metrics....but surprised if it works with same nature in terms of local search or not,because personally I saw if more and more tweets and re-tweets comes from specific geographic twitter profiles, its give you better ranking on specific local ranking rather local Facebook like or shares...so for me..for local search ,local twitter profile's tweets give better correlation than Facebook...need to verify this interesting metrics for national search besides class c domain pr links metrics....
Thanks for the graphs.
I knew that Shares are more important than Likes and that Tweets are of low value since Twitter is so much spammed these days.
Twitter is my #2 search engine. And with some filtering options and tweaks down the road it could become #1. If you want to search and get the very latest on any topic or news item, twitter is becoming a viable option. For example, if you search twitter for "jquery gallery" you get results from today and people's most recent work. If you search google for "jquery gallery" the earliest result is from Jan?! Granted to get the most out of this data, twitter will need to add advanced filtering options down the road. But one way or another, if search engines want to stay relevant, they will need to nab up twitter and facebook data and integrate it into their results, in my opinion :). Whether they are or aren't is good information, but I think it's matter of if not now, they must very soon.
Did anyone (Rand?) answer Blake Waddill's question yet: How are these Facebook "Shares" being tracked and counted by Google (and by seoMoz?) Aren't the shares posted on peoples' walls, and propagated through the Facebook newsfeeds mostly private and only accessible to their friends?
If I share a link with my Facebook friends, I don't see how Google will know that...
Facebook's open graph protocol makes all public shares/likes/comments available. If your account protects or makes this private, neither the engines, nor any other thrid party can access (I think - though perhaps Bing's investment agreement with Facebook has different rules).
Awesome Post!
Personally I am obsessed with twitter then Facebook and obviously like many people I am surprised to see the data as well.
Luckily I am working for different niche and location (on job) and I can say that for most of the niche and locations, Facebook works really well and I guess this is the reason why they have more influence on Rankings the Twitter.
I extract the social data in percentage for my website and find out that Facebook likes are 350% more than twitter tweets.
More influence of Facebook on rankings is justified as for many niche targeted visitors are using Facebook (in a greater % as compare to twitter)
Congrats Rand sir for another Great post!
Hi! I am an newbie on SEO and just joined SEOmoz. Forum is quite intresting.
Regular backlinks are a thing of the past.
Traditional links are far from dead. They form part of an ever changing picture which we all need to adapt to as online marketers. They are less important than they were five years ago and they will probably be a lot less important in five years time than they are today but they are not dead yet. As such continuing to build links as part of your seo strategy is important, however a single technique is not a strategy in of itself.
I'll be looking for links where possible for a long time yet! Just my 2c.
While traditional links are still very powerful and are far from dead, I've noticed that "tweets" are fast becoming the new backlinks. That is to say that, while in the past it was somewhat easier/more common to have other sites/bloggers linking to your post if they liked your site or post, now it's more likely that they'll tweet or re-tweet your link rather than physically link to it on their site--if they even have a site anymore...
Excellent point.... I would say "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". Have a blended approach or "strategy" as you called it. I like to use article marketing combined with content syndication strategies on social media.
What strategies do you like ?
Joe Shaw
A lot has changed since this article was written. I think google+ has more pull than the others for ranking factors now.
Social links are great, but until we know about factors that define "authoritative" profiles, traditional linking will still be king. High trust/high authority domains will still pack a heavy punch in terms of ranking. The only thing I really see being extra-beneficial about Facebook and Twitter having an impact is the fact that quality content attracts regular links, but can attract FB Likes and Tweets even easier. To some extent, this update may level the playing ground for some websites.
If you are a website that produces quality content regularly, but don't actively seek high quality links through traditional means, this type of update may help you naturally surpass competitors who are actively link building through "regular" methods
One thing I should have added in the post - I presented some of this data (not including the "controlling for links" correlations) in Munich, and Google's Maile Ohye (an engineer from the search quality team), noted that "links are still far more powerful than Facebook Likes." Unfortunately, she didn't specify the relationship of links' power to Facebook Shares (or Tweets).
Bing's Stefan Weitz noted that "of course Bing uses these signals - they are great signals of quality, rarely spammed, and it's easy to see that spam."
Great signals of quality is something I strongly disagree with.How many times do you log into Facebook and see people posting about being tired of the cold weather, and that comment has a dozen "Likes". So a new signal, sure. Something they should consider in the algorithm? Perhaps. A signal of quality? Not necessarily.
@Joe You make a good point, but it's unlikely the "Likes" in your example relate to a link. While Rand's point about correlation and causality is definitely worth keeping in mind, it also seems logical that a link with repeated shares or "Likes" on Facebook is going to be higher quality than one without. In many ways, it echoes the original PageRank algorithm, where frequently cited academic papers were considered higher quality than those with fewer citations. We're coming full circle here, albeit, as you point out, with more trivial content - unless of course you want to rank well for "tired of cold weather".
Great post, and I must agree. I like the point you made about higher cited works being more authoratative... Never thought of it like that, but obviously its blatantly obvious! Thumbs up for opening my eyes!
rofl