Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google +1's Correlation with Higher Search Rankings

moz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 103 posts

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

#71

Post by andreascarpetta »

Ryan_Jones wrote: post #68
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

What about purchased +1s ? https://www.seoclerks.com/categories/buy-google-plus-one

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

#73

Post by wyck »

VLM wrote: post #17
wyck wrote: 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?

In fact the opposite, Google's value is providing relevant search results for everyone, not tech savy users who already know how to navigate the net and use adblock.

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

#74

Post by wyck »

dannyr wrote: post #63
wyck wrote: 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.

Empty? I'm pretty sure you don't use Google+.

I can pick 300 random real world friends and guarantee that 99% of them never use Google+, even the ones in tech. I have an account and in 1 year I have posted 2 things to an audience of practically no one.

Compared to other social metric's (facebook, twitter, etc), it's empty.

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

#75

Post by humanspecies »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #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 po…

I just thought I'd drop by and say fuck you Matt Cutts. Hope you get fired for your payday loans spam.

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

#76

Post by umsm »

johnward wrote: post #67
umsm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe that people that want to avoid a question do best to answer it using terminology which can be interpreted in many ways. Politicians have been known to do this.

That being said, he probably answered the question as well as he can or wants to. It's pointless to nitpick.

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

#77

Post by threeseed »

garysieling wrote: post #57
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #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 po…

My experience has been that making better content is great for getting more readers, but not for SEO, which in the long term is fine because it removes the risk of having to chase algorithm changes. When I switched from writing to fill holes in search results to writing for specific communities (including g+ groups) my readership shot up, but the SEO part has stayed pretty flat. It's possible I have something set up…

Exactly.

Great content is often succinct and simple to comprehend.

SEO wants your content to be full of unnecessary keywords that match the search terms which conflicts with this.

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

#78

Post by threeseed »

dannyr wrote: post #63
wyck wrote: 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.

Empty? I'm pretty sure you don't use Google+.

You can't just say that Google+ is not empty when it is so tied to your social structure. I have 3 friends on Google+ and 300 on Facebook. My Google+ is completely empty. Could well be the same for the OP.

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

#79

Post by donnie_Strompf »

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

I don't get it... Are +1s not good enough of an indication that content is good? If Google is not looking at social signals how can they justify good from bad content? Natural links are just as easy to manipulate Google with as unnatural. Instead of anchoring an exact match we use a brand.

Without social it makes it way too easy to game the system which some of our competitors are doing and getting away with after penguin, panda, and all the other updates.

We've been finding companies that rank for "ABC" and all they do is build a bunch of blogs ("abc1.com""abc2.com""abcGreen.com""abcBlue.com" etc..) and keep building them on "free platforms" like wordpress/blogger/weebly and the other hundred sites.. Create a bunch of crap links for Google to index and rank. All google needs to see is a "natural link profile", some onsite SEO and viola.

Lately we've been finding some articles that suggest changing published dates of pages/posts to get them reindexed with freshness. Some are consistently gaming Google, and the ones of us who are creating good content and get some +1s (by sharing it in relevant communities otherwise how will it be found) are going to lose to cheaters. Perhaps it's not as easy to game specific SERPs nationally. However, locally its a piece of cake. Just try looking for a locksmith, the way it's set up now the cheaters are still on top.

My question to Matt Cutts is: if you were an internet marketer and you created good content that got a great amount of real interaction, and that awesome content you created is not getting any SERP love because of others who are cheating the system, what would you do? How long would you wait? and what if nothing changes after the next algorithm change?

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

#80

Post by azakai »

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 pearson correlation, when squared, gives the % of variance (in the strict mathematical sense) that is explained by this variable alone.

So how much is 'weak' or not depends on the situation. If you have something that is influenced by multiple causes, then it is impossible to have any single high correlation. But any correlation, if statistically significant (i.e. highly unlikely to be caused by chance) can be important.

The question is, how much is an 'interesting' amount of the total variance, in the given situation.

(In the topic under discussion here, I have no idea.)

Post reply on HN