Does Google Use Social Signals In Rankings?
October 12, 2011 
2 Comments
This has been a long debated question for some time but now we get to hear it straight form the horses mouth.
With all of the new social signals that are becoming more and more popular (tweets, likes, +1s, etc.) webmasters have often pondered if these play a factor into Google rankings. SEOMoz has even gone so far as to add this data into their reporting.
It has been my personal opinion (not really based on a WHOLE lot of concrete evidence) that Google really does use this as a big factor in their algorithm. If you look at it from this angle it makes sense….
- Google is in the business to deliver relevant search results to its customers
- Initially the best way to do this was by weighing links because they indicate a vote of confidence for the site owner
- The Internet “grew up” and the amount of links grew exponentially, additionally people learned how to “game” the system and manufacture links.
- Social signals are a new GREAT way to indicate votes because people are obviously going to share things they approve of and the amount of signals is still relatively small.
- Certainly down the road this will become diluted as well but right now I believe it’s the best data Google has to establish trust and popularity.
In this video, Matt Cutts says that Google does use this as a factor. He does say that it’s largely been for real time search results but they plan to implement it more in the future. Since this video is from 2010 I believe they have gone much further which is especially evident with the addition of Google +1.
So to all of those naysayers who don’t think social media marketing has any benefit, think again!
yes google uses social media in ranking but too much traffic from social networking sites can be harmful
Not sure I agree with you on that one nisha. Google is not going to penalize you in any way for getting traffic no matter where it’s from.