In a recent Google Webmaster Help video (see below), Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam Team answers one of the most popular questions that many websites have and that is “Does Google use Twitter and Facebook Links as a ranking signal?”  The definitive answer, from Matt is “Yes”.

To be honest, this rather surprised me because rarely have I ever heard Matt answer a question with such forthright authority.  Usually the answer is more along the lines of “Yes, but…” with all kinds of subjective material added to the answer; making it virtually impossible to detect if what you’re doing yourself actually matters at all.

This question stemmed from a recent article written by Danny Sullivan Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Land.

In this article (which is a great read by the way), Danny offers responses by both Bing and Google on specific questions such as:

1. If a link is retweeted or referenced a lot in Twitter, do you count this as a ranking signal?
2. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets?
3. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending upon who Tweeted it?
4. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook?
5. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight on Facebook depending upon who posted the link?

It’s very interesting to read the answers and even more interesting to associate it with your own activity on both of these social networks.

Part of the curiosity with Twitter in particular, is because Twitter does not follow links.  They used to, but I believe it was back in 2009 some time, they added nofollow to all of their links.

What this means is that even though you’re tweeting a link and others may retweet it, the “nofollow” portion of that link is telling the search engines “Hey, if you see this link, don’t follow it to its destination and give that destination credit for it.”

But what’s so much more important here is what Danny has referred to as “SocialRank”.  And I am totally on board with him here…let me explain…

Years (and I mean years ago) when Google especially was gaining ground as the “go to” search engine, people realized that you could manipulate the rankings by:

1. Stuffing a bunch of keywords into your meta keywords tag (and if you don’t know what this is, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter any more anyway).
2. Stuffing your page full of keywords in order to rank well for the keyword you were after.
3. Hiding text on the page in the same color as the page background so that the search engines could read it but your site visitors couldn’t.

When this failed to work any longer, people realized that links were a major factor in where you ranked.  And so…reciprocal linking came along (that’s when you trade links with someone else in an effort to help increase the importance of your website.)

Again, Google soon realized that this wasn’t really a *true* indicator of authority and so it began discounting these kinds of links.

So it became important to try and get links to your website from other important websites (“important” as deemed by Google), in order to help your own website ranking.  This “importance” at least in reference to Google is referred to as PageRank which you can see by installing the Google Toolbar within your browser.

But…it’s also important to understand that the PageRank that you see in your browser for a web page is NOT the *true* PageRank of a web page or website.  As a matter of fact, it’s quite old information.  According to Google PageRank Data, the last time it was updated was April 2, 2010 (it’s now late December 2010).  So…over 8 months ago.

The fact is, Google updates this internally quite often but what you may be looking at today is in fact, 8 months old.

So, all this comes down to this:  Google has hundreds of ranking factors that determine where to place you within it’s search results and for what given terms.  People know a little about how Google determines importance of your web pages, but like all indicators that we at least know of, it can all be manipulated.  Whether or not you choose to manipulate it is up to your own moral standards, but the one thing that is extremely difficult to manipulate is your online reputation.

Who believes you?  Who trusts what you say?  Who retweets your links?  Et cetera, et cetera…

This is what Danny refers to within his article.  And I truly believe that this is the wave of the future for websites and their owners; simply because it is so difficult to fake.  If people trust you, they’ll read more of your stuff.  If you offer valuable information, you’ll be talked about more online, and so on.

Consider a great example of Mari Smith who is trusted by thousands of people online for her information and advice on how to use Facebook effectively.  She is a fantastic example of how SocialRank likely works.  I guarantee that if Mari posts a link, it’s retweeted and shared on Facebook a thousand times over.  She has “SocialRank”.

Take the time to read the article by Danny – I think you’ll find it very enlightening.

P.S.  The video by Matt is below…

Transcript

If you have a Twitter account, this quick video will show you an easy way to find out how many of those friends you’re following on Twitter are actually following you back.

It’s a free website called Twitter Karma and you can visit this site by heading to http://www.dossy.org/twitter/karma.

Once you’re there, enter in your Twitter username and password and then click the large “Whack!” button.

Depending upon how many people you follow, the process could take a little bit.

The first page you come to is a list of all of your followers as well as those who follow you.  The names on this first page are listed by the last time that the person updated their status on Twitter.

If you scroll to the bottom of the first page you’ll see those people that you either follow or who are following you that have not updated in some time.  If you no longer want to follow them, just simply click the box next to their Twitter name and then click the button at the very bottom of the page that says “Bulk Unfollow”.  This will clean those users out of your list.

In order to find out who YOU are following that is not following you back, go back up to the top of the page and from the “Show” drop down list, choose “Only Following”.  This will bring back a list of those people whom you are following but are not following you back.

You can either check each one individually or scroll to the bottom of the page and choose “Check all” and then click “Bulk Unfollow”.  This will unfollow everyone that you have chosen on this page.

As you continue to get more followers, you’ll want to visit this site on a regular basis – even as frequently as once a week.  Doing this will help you keep your Twitter list nice and clean.

Twitter is a website where you are able to update your status as frequently as you like. Your updates are restricted to 140 characters so Twitter as well as other sites that limit your updates to little bite-sized pieces of text are oftentimes called “micro-blogs”. The purpose of Twitter is to build your brand, interact with other people, share links, and simply grow your business.

Here are 7 easy steps to using Twitter.

1. The first thing you’ll want to do is set up a Twitter account if you haven’t already. Simply go to Twitter.com and click the green “Sign up Now” button. Enter some basic information about yourself and then create your account.
2. Next, set up your profile. Once you’re logged in, click on Settings at the top right of the page and then click on “account”. Add your name, your website address, your location, and most importantly a Bio about yourself. This bio will be one of the most crucial factors that help people decide to follow you and your updates or not. Tell people what you do and who you are. It’s confined to 160 characters so pull out your best written materials!
3. Third, click “picture” and add a profile picture preferably one of yourself. If you use the default icon that Twitter gives you this will limit the number of people who will follow you.
4. Fourth, Design your background by clicking on “Design”. If you’re just starting out, you can simply choose a default design that Twitter offers. However, you will eventually want a customized background for your business or website. There are many services online that allow you to do this free of charge.
5. Begin to make some status updates. What are you doing right now? What are you working on? Did you find an interesting link that you’d like to share? If you’re brand new to Twitter and don’t yet have many status updates (also called Tweets), or those status updates are nothing but attempting to sell something, you won’t get a lot of followers which is central to Twitter. Instead, post informative updates, interesting links, and anything else that you would like to share without having that link be self-serving.The more tweets you make at Twitter, and the more often you do so, the better the chances you have of getting more Twitter followers. Keep in mind that each tweet is limited to 140 characters so when you share a link especially, the characters in the link will be included in your 140 character limit.
6. Next, begin to get some followers for your new Twitter page. Click on “Find People” at the top right of the page then enter in a name in the search box. You can also connect to your Gmail, Yahoo or AOL email accounts and find people you may already know who are on Twitter. Additionally, if there are people whose websites you visit on a steady basis chances are they have a Twitter account. Visit their website or blog and look for a link to their Twitter account.
7. Finally, don’t be afraid to tell people you have a Twitter account. This will assist you in getting more Twitter followers.

The bottom line is with Twitter, is building trust first and then selling to those people later. No one wants to be marketed to all of the time so you ought to make your Twitter account something helpful to others first and foremost and make the helpful posts the bulk of your tweets. You can still market to your followers you just don’t want to make those the vast majority of your status updates.

BoneheadSEO is a website that gives you easy tutorials on how to get website traffic and learn SEO.

In around two months time, updates from Facebook will be integrated into Bing search.

What this means to you is that if any of your privacy settings at Facebook are set to “everyone” then all of those updates you make at Facebook will be publicly available on Bing.

*I think I just saw you cringe.*

So unless you don’t want everything you say at Facebook to be out there for the entire world to see, you need to make some changes.

The good news is, this isn’t happening for a couple of months yet so you’ve got plenty of time to change your privacy permissions.

Here’s how you do that:

1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on “Settings” in the upper right hand corner
3. Change the settings so that nothing listed says “everyone”.

And don’t think that just because Bing is now in the picture that Google won’t be far behind…at least on some front.  It’s long been talked about that Facebook is a huge Google competitor.  Yet here comes Bing with the ability to integrate these Facebook updates…which Google has yet to do and which I’m sure was a slap in the face.

Maybe that’s why Google announced that they’ll be integrating real-time Twitter updates just like Bing (who got there first by the way).

All of a sudden, Bing is becoming a huge thorn in Google’s side.  I see a lot of “playing catch-up” going on lately.  But hey, a little competition never hurt anyone right?

Image via CrunchBase

First, my apologies for doing two blog posts in one day.  I felt that this was just far too interesting to not pass along and I’m sure you’re going to be hearing a LOT about this in the upcoming days and weeks.

An interesting story just came across my desk (read email) about how Twitter is currently beta-testing something called the “Discovery Engine“.

This improvement to Twitter which is currently being beta tested by a few users, places a search box at the top of the page and then displays the results of that search within your current Twitter window.

If you currently use Twitter, you know that all the Tweets of people you have chosen to follow show up in your own Twitter window in real time.  With the new search feature that Twitter is testing, whenever you search on a term, your Twitter window will then be populated with those users you follow who have referenced that search term themselves.

This new feature also allows you to save searches.  So if there is a search that you do on a regular basis, you can tell Twitter to keep this search phrase available for you and it will do so by placing it on your Twitter window.

I’m still not certain (since this new feature is still in beta) if that means that the search terms you have saved will be available for others to see.

Twitter is also testing out trends.  Another program called Tweetdeck does this already but Twitter is now testing it out within their own program (again, in beta). Essentially how this works is that Twitter will be able to determine what topics are “hot” right now.

So what does this have to do with Google?

As it stands now, whenever Google decides to add something to their index regardless of what that “something” is; a blog post, a news story, an updated web page, etc., Google’s bot first has to find that information, add it to its index, sort it out to see where it belongs and then eventually have it show up on a related page.

Here’s a great example.  Let’s say that you’re an American Idol fan.  You watch it religiously and just can’t wait to talk about the latest “Idol” that has been voted off.

Since the results are read (and not known) until it’s revealed on the air live, no one (aside from the group who tallies the votes) knows who will go and who will stay.

But once those results are read you can bet that hundreds if not thousands of Twitterers are talking about the results within seconds after the vote has been read live on air.

The problem is that in order for Google to show this information in its search results, it first has to be placed in print somewhere online.  One could argue that the Twitter feed itself that is updating could be considered part of that “print”.

Where the delay lies however, is that Google’s bot needs to first find that information, organize it, decide where to put it, and then finally start to display it within their search results.

Since Twitter is “powered by the people” this information is instantly available and no one has to sit around and wait for news on the topic.  If you want to know, just login to Twitter and see what people are saying.

What’s interesting is that Google just earlier this year set up their own Twitter account and this has led to a lot of speculation.

Is Google “checking out their competition?”

Is Google going to make an offer for Twitter?

Do Twitterers even want that?

You can bet that Google is smacking themselves over the head wondering “why didn’t I think of that?”  (I personally picture Homer Simpson saying “D’oh!”).

None the less, it will be an interesting story to keep tabs on.  What have you heard through the Twitter grapevine?

But, I’ve done something very unique with this – I’m either incredibly stupid or incredibly brilliant – (they’re kind of the same in some ways don’t you think?)…none the less, I’ve made it available for free (not unique by any means) but I’ve given you the source and am giving those who download it authority to update it as they see fit to give it away to THEIR interested parties.

You’ll see what I mean when you get to the page.

To deter some folks from simply taking it for all its worth I do require an opt-in for the book – you’ll see why when you get to the page.

Visit http://boneheadseo.com/The-Twitter-Book.html

- Kristine

Look for this to be available within the next couple of weeks.

- Kristine

Just a quick post today before I head out to help with my son’s preschool Thanksgiving day party.

Lately I’ve been running across lots of neat Twitter applications that you might enjoy.  Here are 4 of them.

1. Mr. Tweet – Ed Dale – http://twitter.com/Ed_Dale brought this one to my attention.  What Mr. Tweet will do is give you a list of people that are outside your Twitter network that you should be following.  It’s billed as a “personal assistant” for Twitter but acts like Facebook’s friend finder.  You can read more about what Mr. Tweet does at http://mashable.com/2008/11/26/mr-tweet/
2. Quitter – Quitter will email you when someone stops following you and to top it off, will also tell you the Tweet you posted that may have caused them to stop following.  You can read more about Quitter at http://mashable.com/2008/10/17/qwitter/
3. Magpie – Be-a-Magpie allows you to either purchase advertising on Twitter or earn money from advertising on Twitter.
4. TwitWall – Twitwall allows you to make those longer posts that you wish you could make in Twitter.  Completely free for all Twitter users.

Enjoy!