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Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

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

#61

Post by anon1385 »

thezilch wrote: post #53
anon1385 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The goal is […] to share high quality content on Google+ and build your influence through this channel, and this can lead to real world success. i.e. if you don't use Google+ you will lose out in rankings compared to sites that do. So the SEO advice about "make good content people want to see" needs to be amended to "make good content but make sure you share it on the closed proprietary social network run by the sea…

Rubbish. Make good content, and make sure to share it to everyone that will find it good -- those following you on social networks.

As far as I'm aware nearly all social networks require you to join them before people can 'follow' you on them. So I don't see how what you said contradicts my point : if you don't make a G+ account you are going to lose out in organic search ranking.

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

#62

Post by ignostic »

Ryan_Jones wrote: post #42
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I love that the correlation for "Facebook shares, like, comments" (though those are three different things) is listed as 0.03 less, even though I've pointed out multiple times that Facebook doesn't exactly make it easy for Google to crawl Facebook to see that data. Your point #3 is critical: high quality things get more +1s (and tweets, and Facebook likes or comments or shares).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't anything under .5 considered extremely weak correlation?

The short answer is, "no, but it depends." If sample size is large and the sample is representative of what it claims to show, .5 is very significant correlation.

The .3 correlation with a large sample size means something is happening. I agree with what Matt is saying: that content that gets +1s also gets links and mentions and everything else that Google might use to calculate rankings.

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

#64

Post by dannyr »

anon1385 wrote: post #40
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

johnward, I know of at least one other SEO that has been doing a more rigorous study of whether more +1s lead to a higher ranking. I suspect that study might come out in the next month or two. Suffice it to say that I would be very skeptical of anyone who claimed that more +1s led to a higher search ranking in Google's web results.

I notice that you avoided answering the direct question…

It's a conspiracy!

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

#65

Post by toddmcdonald »

andylei wrote: post #19

1. the correlation is 0.3. that's not a high number. 2. the correlation for facebook likes is 0.27. that's lower, but not by much. 3. its possible the causality runs the other direction: high quality results get more +1s

I Like number 3. I think there's two ways this works: 1) Killer content is created and social shares quickly give signals of freshness and quality within an area. Combine that with early user metrics as the content moves up and you have a good idea of it's quality. However, if this content is not soon backed with corresponding signals (links, etc.) the ranking can fade. This is likely dependent on the industry and topic as to how it plays out.

The other possibility is a good piece of content earns links, has great user metrics for certain keywords, lives on a great site, etc. and ranks well. It then accumulates social shares on top of that, further confirming the quality of the content. Thus...you get a situation like #3. Social signals make sense for indexation, but beyond that, until you start to understand the importance of the author (cough, AuthorRank, cough) then you can't use them for much more then understanding what the "mob" is finding valuable at the moment. And it might be a very fleeting fascination on a subject that really doesn't deserve to hold a ranking.

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

#66

Post by thezilch »

anon1385 wrote: post #61
thezilch wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubbish. Make good content, and make sure to share it to everyone that will find it good -- those following you on social networks.

As far as I'm aware nearly all social networks require you to join them before people can 'follow' you on them. So I don't see how what you said contradicts my point : if you don't make a G+ account you are going to lose out in organic search ranking.

Your point was to elicit ridicule of Google and Google+. If your point was to instruct authors to share their content by any means and on all platforms, then you should have made that point.

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

#67

Post by johnward »

umsm wrote: post #52
anon1385 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice that you avoided answering the direct question…

I believe he answered the question in the original comment.

"Are you, Matt Cutts, saying that +1s make no difference in Google rankings?"

I don't think he answered it. He basically avoided the question as expected. Not that I have anything against Cutts. There are probably things he can and cannot say or maybe he doesn't know.

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

#68

Post by Ryan_Jones »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #29
dynamic99 wrote: post #18

Isn't this obvious? Google _made_ +1s (and Google+).

Well, no. Unless Google is shooting itself in the foot, then either the research is wrong or pages that attract +1's are hosted and linked to in more SEO friendly ways. Google is really unlikely to be blatantly and obviously fixing its rankings. That is the golden goose. everything goes away when that is shown to be true in public.

it's really quite simple. The pages that get more +1s and likes and comments and whatever metric you want are the ones that are good. The ones that are good also get more links and other signals that are used in algorithms. The hidden middle-factor here is "quality."

That, or simply: "the pages that have more +1s have them because they ranked and got more traffic. e.g. nobody's +1ing pages that they can't find."

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

#69

Post by cyrusshepard »

mbesto wrote: post #55
cyrusshepard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyrus here (the author) Thanks Matt, I think we both agree that Google doesn't use +1's directly in your algorithm. But are you implying there are no SEO benefits to posting popular content on Google+? Google does use PageRank and anchor text, 2 things present in Google+ posts that aren't passed as easily in Facebook and Twitter. It seems to me that a popular post on Google+, shared and linked to by well known author…

> Thanks Matt, I think we both agree that Google doesn't use +1's directly in your algorithm. > Now, if you tell me you treat Google+ differently in a way that blocks link juice, blocks anchor text and doesn't pass link equity, then I think I would have to rethink my thesis. > My argument is that Google+ as a platform passes actual SEO value, and I don't think this is a bad thing or something that needs to be debunke…

+1s and Google+ posts are two separate things.

A Google+ post passes SEO benefits (through linking) independent of the number of +1s it has. So although Google doesn't use +1s directly, it does use the link signals found naturally in the Google+ post itself. Because these link signals are by design blocked by Facebook and Twitter, this makes Google+ a superior platform from an SEO perspective.

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

#70

Post by andreascarpetta »

JDDunn9 wrote: post #49
saosebastiao wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, by definition, you are wrong. And you are wrong about 90% of the market as well. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2289560/Googles-Search-...

That's only for the U.S. In all but a few foreign countries, Google has closer to a 90% market share.

IIRC it's actually around 95%-ish in italy. We had some data shown by an important web analytics player during the italian Search marketing conference in December 2012. http://www.convegnogt.it/2012/interventi/lo-stato-del-search...
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