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Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

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11–20 of 103 posts

Re: Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

#11
post #9

Does this mean I have to put a +1 button on my site if I don't want it to come after all the sites that do have +1 buttons (unless I'm a canonical source like Wikipedia)? If so, it seems like a gross abuse of power on Google's part. I would imagine Facebook could file an anti-trust suit over this.

I read it as having your site +1'd not having a button (but the button makes it easier for people to +1 your site).

Re: Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

#12
post #10
post #6

2 things: 1) I think most people suspected this, and it's not amazing. 2) Is this not an abuse of their monopoly position in search? In that, to obtain a better placement or even just retain existing placement, you would have to participate in Google+

Do they really have a monopoly in search? Have they bought/created all the patents that stop other companies from implementing online search engines? I don't think there is a monopoly in search, look we have duckduckgo for instance. Since it's their search and their google+ why aren't they allowed to use one as metrics for the other?

They have more than 90% of the market. The fact that alternatives exist doesn't make them not a monopoly when hardly anyone is using those alternatives. See windows in the late '90s.

Re: Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

#13
post #5

I think it makes sense that Google +1s is used in high search rankings. It's the one social signal they can audit to see if people are cheating on it. They own the whole Google+ social graph and can easily detect if it's being gamed. Or it can just be that the more +1's you get, the more links you get, which boosts the rankings. So it may just be an indirect correlation.

No, I don't think so. Humbly, my best articles are the one with less +1s while the ones with relatively high +1s are related to my success or luck promoting them. Also I don't see a correlation in my blogs between more retweets and more Google's +1s. It is most probable because my blogs don't have many visitors and didn't cross the charm, but I expect search engines like Google to leverage the long tail instead of sm…

I tend to see negative correlation between shares on any social media platform x and any social media platform y. The audiences just differ so much that anything that'll grab the Twitter crowd will tend to put off the StumbleUpon crowd, and so on.

There's some crossover between a very few platforms, e.g. posts which get a lot of InShares will also likely get Tweeted a lot. It's quite rare, though, in my experience.

Re: Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

#14
I think that Google is not magically adding their +1's to PageRank whilst not doing the same for Facebook likes etc. But rather that google plus has been designed by Googlers for Google's engine. As such a post on a plus account will attract percentage-wise far more +1s (same way a facebook post will get more likes).

And so if you compare two posts, one on facebook, one on plus.google, and they both have the same number of backlinks (likes/+1s) then the plus post will be better SEO friendly and so outrank.

The fact it out ranks so much suggests that something screwy is going on - either there is a lot of cash left on the table for SEO-friendly pages, or that something like being on the google root domain helps in ways that have not been corrected for.

I would doubt if Google is out and out cheating. But a lawsuit would force them to say how facebook could up its pages...

Edit: I know I'm not supposed to but really - why the down votes? I would be very surprised if Google is trying to kill the golden goose.

Re: Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

#15
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really have a monopoly in search? Have they bought/created all the patents that stop other companies from implementing online search engines? I don't think there is a monopoly in search, look we have duckduckgo for instance. Since it's their search and their google+ why aren't they allowed to use one as metrics for the other?

They have more than 90% of the market. The fact that alternatives exist doesn't make them not a monopoly when hardly anyone is using those alternatives. See windows in the late '90s.

Actually, by definition, you are wrong. And you are wrong about 90% of the market as well.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2289560/Googles-Search-...

Re: Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

#16
post #9

Does this mean I have to put a +1 button on my site if I don't want it to come after all the sites that do have +1 buttons (unless I'm a canonical source like Wikipedia)? If so, it seems like a gross abuse of power on Google's part. I would imagine Facebook could file an anti-trust suit over this.

I doubt it.

Does Facebook allow Google access to the signals it would need to weigh the relevant results?

Re: Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

#17
post #7

This makes sense in areas where Google+ is popular, but in North America Google+ is a empty outside online marketers and tech communities, so how can they possible rely on it as a metric.

Wouldn't those two groups be the most heavy users / most interested in search results?

Re: Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

#20
Just trying to decide the politest way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings. Let's start with correlation != causation: http://xkcd.com/552/

But it would probably be better to point to this 2011 post (also from SEOMoz/Moz) from two years ago in which a similar claim was made about Facebook shares: http://moz.com/blog/does-google-use-facebook-shares-to-influ... . From that blog post from two years ago: "One of the most interesting findings from our 2011 Ranking Factors analysis was the high correlation between Facebook shares and Google US search position."

This all came to a head at the SMX Advanced search conference in 2011 where Rand Fishkin presented his claims. I did a polite debunk of the idea that Google used Facebook shares in our web ranking at the conference, leading to this section in the 2011 blog post: "Rand pointed out that Google does have some access to Facebook data overall and set up a small-scale test to determine if Google would index content that was solely shared on Facebook. To date, that page has not been indexed, despite having quite a few shares (64 according to the OpenGraph)."

If you make compelling content, people will link to it, like it, share it on Facebook, +1 it, etc. But that doesn't mean that Google is using those signals in our ranking.

Rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much better spent making great content.

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