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Google's Social Strategy

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Re: Google's Social Strategy

#2
I really think that incorporating the +1 button into their actual rankings would cause Google more grief than it is worth.

It would be like a built-in spamming vector for any less-than-legitimate site out there.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#3
post #2

I really think that incorporating the +1 button into their actual rankings would cause Google more grief than it is worth. It would be like a built-in spamming vector for any less-than-legitimate site out there.

Google has built one of the most successful email spam filters and they've arguably done a decent job at cracking down on link farms and other black-hat SEO tactics. They'll certainly have more work to do but I don't think they'll have a problem identifying spam or fake "+1's". Historical user behavior and other signals will help them filter out spammers. Additionally, Google will likely emphasize +1's from your friends and my guess is most of us aren't friends with spammers.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#4
> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers.

Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a party two weeks ago.

Facebook is such a horrible platform for creative people. Name any creative area and I will name you a website that beats facebook hands down (in both community and convenience of posting and reviewing your creations).

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#5
post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

Facebook doesn't let you input enough information to do anything creative. I would never, ever write a blog post on my facebook, then link people to it.

Can you even do that?

I would never, ever post anything other than cellphone snapshots into facebook, their photo UI seems to discourage it as a photograph sharing tool (snapshot sharing yes, but I don't know anybody that would ditch flickr for facebook).

Can you upload music to facebook? I don't...think so?

People are creating things, but facebook has no way of categorizing this stuff, so I don't think people are putting "valuable" things into it, because they know that they'll never be able to find them again.

The fact that greplin is looked at as such an amazingly exciting tool illustrates this, I think.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#6
post #3
post #2

I really think that incorporating the +1 button into their actual rankings would cause Google more grief than it is worth. It would be like a built-in spamming vector for any less-than-legitimate site out there.

Google has built one of the most successful email spam filters and they've arguably done a decent job at cracking down on link farms and other black-hat SEO tactics. They'll certainly have more work to do but I don't think they'll have a problem identifying spam or fake "+1's". Historical user behavior and other signals will help them filter out spammers. Additionally, Google will likely emphasize +1's from your frie…

Agreed. Twitter is completely inundated with spam and I consider trending topics to generally be among the worst examples of human expression, and yet I love twitter and use it constantly because I only see updates from people I follow.

google's "social" search results don't show up that often for me, but when they do, the little icon and note that says "so-and-so has shared this link" make me look at that link first because a) google has matched it to my query and b) so-and-so liked it enough to share it on twitter (and +1 now? not sure if it's working yet).

This mostly works for me for searches about programming, since that is the community I follow on twitter, but it does a great job of separating wheat from chaff and helping me stumble upon related cool things. Hopefully they don't screw this up and I can get similar benefits for other topics/related communities.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#7
post #2

I really think that incorporating the +1 button into their actual rankings would cause Google more grief than it is worth. It would be like a built-in spamming vector for any less-than-legitimate site out there.

I see your point, but it's not like there is some sort of +1 on-off switch. Google has some pretty sophisticated and effective means of detecting linking manipulation; I'm sure the same care and set of safeguards would be put in place if +1 was to be used as a ranking factor. Just a casual mention by Matt Cutts that +1 data is used as a part of the algorithm (no matter how small its actual impact) would likely be enough to drive huge adoption.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#8
post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

[deleted]

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#9
post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

"I like" create is enough for fb :(

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#10
post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

Creative people are really using specific social platforms like Flickr and DeviantArt However Facebook really captures "casual creativity": Like a mom posting a photo of a child's drawing to share with grandma. This audience doesn't want Google to crawl that semi-personal content. As where a Flickr and DeviantArt user will pimp their creations to the masses.
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