Social shares: A ranking factor or not?
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Open Site Explorer lists them and every so-called SEO expert says social signals/shares are a ranking factor. Everyone but Matt Cutts, it would seem.
So if they're not a ranking factor, why show them in Open Site Explorer?
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If you follow someone on Google+, content they share will be biased higher in your search results, if you're logged in to Google yourself and don't have personal search results disabled. That's the only definite. Here's more: http://moz.com/blog/using-google-plus-to-appear-in-the-top-results-every-time-whiteboard-friday
As for showing other social signals on OSS - they're a useful metric to know, and will probably become more of a ranking factor in future. Shares from established Facebook/Twitter accounts with lots of followers will probably carry more weight.
See Moz's Ranking Factors survey for more info: http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
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I do believe that social signals are not really the ranking signals but they do affect links indirectly so, when doing a research or backlink analysis for this website, this data is important to better understand their link profile and maybe that’s why the data is available in Open Site Explorer.
Hope this helps!
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This may not answer your question completely, but I'll take a shot at it. I saw Eric Enge speak at the 2013 State of Search conference in Dallas. The topic was Google+ as a ranking factor. His conclusion was 'Not really'.
What about Facebook and Twitter? Google has total control of +. They don't have total control of many other social networks. A lot of social networks are too fast for Google. Their understanding is incomplete because relationships change.
How a person is connected can change in a second. Indexation takes longer than that. Perfect, up to the second, knowledge of some social networks appears to be beyond them. At least that's what I gather from Cutt's video.
The devil is in the details, social networks are a great way to get your brand/message/content out there. If something 'works' it's likely to result in organic links. But let's stop worrying about ranking factors for a moment.
The ancients in our industry existed before most of the search engines. Thus there wasn't an algorithm to worry about. They thought about link building the way it should be done. They approached link value with the question; "How much traffic can this link drive to my site, and thus convert?"
So if you have a link with a lot of visibility/traffic potential, wouldn't you like to know about it?
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Yes, social media signals are a vital search marketing component. If you've written some great informative content, the best way to share is via social media, which may or may not draw your followers, and more to your site.
Remember most marketing tools will not give you a full (100% accuracy) overview how well your site is performing.
Sorry if I have stated the obvious here. Michael is correct regarding employees from Google expressing "quality" signals from Panda.
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Loaded question.
There have been G employees going public saying they are Panda Indicators. These are something that are present in the profiles of quality websites. Your goal should always be to emulate the best of the best so I do not think it is something anyone should ignore.
My data shows they are an influence on certain elements and due to that I am comfortable saying that they are a necessary element to any seo campaign.
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