It has long been assumed that ‘social signals’ will improve your rank in Google. But what are social signals? And does Google really use them in its algorithm? Should one still seek to get thousands of likes or followers? Let’s discuss.
What are social signals?
Before we begin we have to clarify our terms. Social signals could be defined as likes, shares, tweets, follows, pluses (as in Google+) votes, pins, or views people place on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media sites.
Does Google use them?
Bluntly, no. Google’s Matt Cutts finally went on the record about this in a short Google Webmasters video. He explains that the relationship is corollary, not causative, in other words: it may seem like it does but those social signals themselves don’t cause a ranking improvement, they do however cause more visitors to go to your site, search for your site, and more people to link to your content, and it is this which will improve your SEO. Cutts went on to explain technically why Google does not use social signals:
1) On at least once occasion, Google has been blocked from crawling one of these sites (likely Twitter). This meant that all the hard work of engineering these signals into their rankings algorithm became pretty much moot. Google’s engineers aren’t keen on investing a ton of time working social signals into their ranking factors, only to be banned from crawling a particular social networking site.
2) Due to the fact that the data that’s collected by Google is based on a ‘snapshot’ at one point in time, Google is hesitant to crawl and index sensitive information that may be changed by users at any time (for instance, someone changing their status from ‘married’ to ‘single’.)
Should I stop using social media?
With this new information disabused webmasters and marketers might be persuaded to stop using social media. But they should without a doubt continue to use this medium. Social media still provides numerous affordable and effective means of promotion and marketing which if done properly will boost your traffic and popularity. To watch the Matt Cutts video click here:
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