At the beginning of this month, Danny Sullivan had an amazing interview with Google and Bing (via email and phone respectively) and wrote a post titled What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count? (http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389), in which both Google and Bing confirmed that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on.
There is also a related post called Google + Bing Confirm that Twitter/Facebook Influence SEO by Rank Fishkin on The SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog.
In fact, the confirmation of Google and Bing didn’t surprise me, not at all.
It has been a million times that Google emphasizes the concept of “voting” for SEOs. Backlinks, anchor texts, press releases, tweets, likes…they are all certain forms of “voting”. And since Google is doing all this just to improve the user experience, namely quality of the stuff in the SERPs, why not directly “listen to the voters”, besides counting the “votes”?
Google Bot vs John Doe
Countless Googlebots (how many anyway? Please tell me, hehe) are sent out to index pages that they think “valuable”, while at the same time, 2 billion Internet users are looking for what they think interesting or useful over the Internet.
People may be wondering “Who should I trust, but as a SEO, I am wondering when they will work together. Because that’ll be the future of search engines.
I have tried Blekko too, a search engine that is designed to be social. Now it is connected with Facebook, which makes Blekko even more social. Although it is still of a certain distance from being flawless, it is something that desires all SEO’s attention, and what is more, I personally think it is fun.
So what search engine and social giants are worried about anyway?
Cheats, like always.
Yes, Google and Bing confirmed social networking sites’ influence on SEO, but hey, please put your credit card back into your pocket and tell the guy having 1000 Facebook accounts on sale to leave.
Google and Bing have not developed algorithms effective enough to calculate the importance of links from social networking sites. so for now, who you are still matters, according to the feedbacks of Google and Bing to Danny Sullivan.
This partly limits the power of social networking sites’ influence on SEO, but on the other hand, it is a good thing, because we all know where there is a will, there is a way; where there is a way, there is a will to cheat. Before the giants successfully develop kickass technologies that are able to generate relatively more accurate results for SNS, we’d better put it onto the backseat.
When Chinese search engines will (admit they) consider social signals?
I wanted to have a decent interview with Chinese search engines too, like how Danny Sullivan handsomely did, writing emails and talking over the phone. I even sent an email to Baidu, but guess that went to their spam folder, as expected.
But judging from the ever-conservative attitude towards Internet marketing, it will still be long before Chinese search engines consider social signals. You know, in a country with a population of 1.4 billion, the potential power of social networking sites can be beyond our imagination, both in a good and a bad way.
Related posts:
- Baidu Share – social sharing service from Baidu
- Social Share Button Services in China
- Social Responsibility of Internet Marketers
- Free Chinese Social Media Icons for Popular SNS in China
- Google switched CEO – Chief Executive Optimization?
- Are .CN Domains Better for Baidu or Chinese SEO?
- Baidu “Page Rank” Checker