Google & Bing DO Count Facebook & Twitter Links
**** Cross-posted from http://KristineWirth.com ****
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:
- If a link is retweeted or referenced a lot in Twitter, do you count this as a ranking signal?
- Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets?
- Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending upon who Tweeted it?
- Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook?
- 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:
- 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).
- Stuffing your page full of keywords in order to rank well for the keyword you were after.
- 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…