Do facebook shares pass share juice the same way links pass link juice?
-
If i have a page on my domain say PAGE-A and let's say it's located at:
http://www.mydomain.com/something/page-a and this page has quite a lot of page authority from many many inbound links. It is my understanding that if i "sculpt" the internal links on PAGE-A to point at only my primary targets, let's call the PAGE-B, PAGE-C, and PAGE-D; then those pages would gain some benefit from this link juice flowing through.
Consider a similar situation where i have a page, say PAGE-F located at: http://www.mydomain.com/anotherpage/page-F
and page-F gets 150 facebook shares. would the links on page-F pass this benefit on in any way? Or is only the direct target of the facebook share gaining benefit from this facebook sharing?
Furthermore, lets consider a scenario where there are 30 or 40 similar pages like PAGE-F all with links out to my primary targets. Would these primary targets gain anything as these 30 or 40 pages gained facebook shares?
Repeat above question, replace 'facebook' with 'twitter'. repeat again for 'google+' ?
-
Exactly how and if Facebook shares affect ranking is the subject of speculation. The only hard facts are what Google tells us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxTmZulcQZ0
Everything shared in the video is exactly what I mentioned in the initial reply.
Beyond this point we can only analyze, test and draw conclusions (i.e. best guesses). Some great analysis of the topic:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/does-google-use-facebook-shares-to-influence-search-rankings
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings
A conclusion drawn from the above, which I agree with is "Earning Facebook shares (probably) will not directly boost your Google rankings (though it may have positive effects that indirectly promote links, tweets and other signals Google may use)."
Based on the above sources, I maintain the position shared in the original reply. I absolutely could be wrong which I freely acknowledge. I am simply sharing the knowledge I have acquired on this topic.
-
Hmmm I see your point but it seems naive to assume that google can't see how many times a link has been shared on facebook. It seems like a pretty simple bit of code to hook into their API and return the total number of shares. Who's to say they wouldn't use this data?
Let's assume for a moment that there are T number of total shares, and X visible shares, while I invisible shares for a given link. We could say that T = X + I.
Further more if we assume that each share on facebook has an associated Page authority, lets call it Pa. And let's also assume that each page that is invisible to google has an unknown page authority Po. Then it would follow that the total link juice passed by a facebook share would be something like:
Link Juice = SUM-of-Pa-from-0-to-X + SUM-of-Po-from-X-to-T
If we were to assume that on average Po was equal to the average page authority of the visible share pages, then we could conclude that
Po = (Sum-of-Pa-from-0-to-X) / X = PAverage
So you'de get: Link Juice = SUM-of-Pa-from-0-to-X + PAverage*(T-X)
Since they are capable of caluculating both of these quantities (all known variables) then i think it follows they they would be able to calculate the rough value of a link shared via facebook.
If i can do this pseudo math on the back of a napkin, who's to say that Google's engineers couldn't figure this one out?
So can we still safely assume that google treats facebook shares the same way they treat other links? I highly doubt it. Espcially because of the fact that most of them, like you say, are nofollow, yet despite their nofollow and invisibility, they still effect rankings (at least they do in my experience).
-
The first question is, are the facebook shares visible? Try logging out of facebook and then viewing the link. Can you see it?
Many facebook shares are not visible due to various settings. If the sharer only shares links with friends, then you wont see the link. Another example is if the topic is flagged as adult by facebook, or if it has any age restriction, you wont see the link. By "you" I mean a user which is not logged in such as the Google crawler. Those links do not flow link juice.
Additionally, if the link is nofollow which they usually (?always) are, then they do not pass link juice.
In short, a facebook or twitter share is not different then any other web page. The basic questions are: can the crawler see the link? is the link followed? does the linking page have any PR? etc.
With respect to Google+, it is the newest server and only recently out of beta. Clearly Google crawlers can crawl their own site as they wish. With that said, in the past Matt Cutts has shared Google crawlers respected the privacy from other Google properties so my guess is the same website rules apply. I am not aware of any study which confirms or rejects this information.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Tool like Followerwonk for Facebook?
Hi For Twitter using Followerwonk you can gauge the influence on what a person/brand is using a tool like Follwerwonk helping you find the most influential twitter users based on a number of metrics. But is there a similar tool for Facebook which shows which brands/companies Facebook sites have the most influence. Or is the best way to gauge this is just on their number of likes? which is not really accurate
Social Media | | ocelot0 -
Social Media Links
I cannot seem to find the answer through my research. Can somebody tell me if social media links to a website are taking into consideration by Google? For example, if l have a video on my website and post the link on my facebook page, when other people share it do more and more links get created? Are these picked up on open site explorer?
Social Media | | RobSchofield0 -
How do search engines understand what social pages are official pages of my brand? If my Facebook page name is not my brand name (even though there are links from website to page and vice-versa) will that confuse search engines?
My question is about social shares, and how search engines understand what profiles are linked to what businesses?
Social Media | | PlanetDISH0 -
Adult dating site. How can I get people to share content on facebook or google plus..
I am working on http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com an adult dating review website. I want to build a presence on social networks so have set up twitter, google plus, and a facebook page. As I understand it retweets, like, shares etc... Play a significant part in seo. Therefore I want to get as many shares etc as possible. My initial idea was to create a fan page on facebook and pay to promote it on facebook gaining likes on the fan page. Will likes on the fan page impact the main site? I would imagine not? However I can see how someone visiting the main site and liking a post would have a positive effect on rankings. The problem I've come into is facebook won't run the ads as the page is adult so they won't accept paid ads. If I add a post to the facebook page how can I get it in front of people to share or like it? Equally how can I get google plus shares? I'm new to social and am unsure of how I should proceed? Especially as facebook considers the page adult. Finally how important is social. I've read it can get short term wins and optimised posts can appear at the top of search results but don't stay there long. Link building is still the long term strategy?
Social Media | | SamCUK0 -
Facebook Like Quick Question
What is best practice for the Facebook like button, when a user clicks on like on your webpage should this go to your facebook page our should it contain your website url? The reason being is that on my homepage it shows as 5 likes but when going to my facebook page it is only showing 1 like? So where are the other 4 likes going? Any ideas on what is going wrong or what I have set up wrong? The like box is on http://www.cheapfindergames.com/xbox360 My Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cheapfinder/129888913795351
Social Media | | ocelot0 -
Wordpress left side share buttons
Looking online I noticed sites like mashable listing share buttons on the left of the screen I think this is a great idea and a lot more prominent. So I then looked at the current solution we have on wordpress that lists them at the bottom of the individual posts. does anyone know of any plugins that list the share buttons to the left of the page ?
Social Media | | onlinemediadirect0 -
Do links in Paper.li twitter round-ups help my SEO?
My twitter feed is picked up in the daily roundups like Paper.li. Do these links count towards my SEO effort or are they just empty. Clearly they spread my content so that great, just wondered if the links pass juice to the site.
Social Media | | GlobalLingo0 -
Does shared content affect rankings?
I've noticed that when logged into Google, content shared by people within my social graph is being identified by a "(name of person) shared this". And, content shared by people not within my social graph (but people who have a Google+ account) is being identified with their picture. My questions are: Is this "(name of person) shared this" content showing on first page of results because they're in my social graph. Or would this content have been on 1st page regardless of whether it had been shared? Why is google identifying who is sharing content when they're not in my social graph? Thank you!
Social Media | | LaraMcCulloch0