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
-
Best way to link from press releases
I'm wondering what people recommend for linking from press releases; specifically, what kind of tracking parameters people add to their links, if any. My first thought is to add UTM tracking parameters for Google Analytics, but I have a few concerns: bloggers that copy our link from the release include the tracking parameters in the links from their site, which would only identify the traffic as coming from the release and not the specific sites UTM parameters in the link may make it look less natural to Google Also, I've considered using shortened URL's without parameters in the release that get 301 redirected to the relevant pages, which I thought might have a few benefits: the links look more natural (no tracking parameters) UTM parameters could be added as part of the redirect after the fact if the release attracted links from spammy sources for some reason I could kill the redirect, which I'm hoping would effectively kill the link My company doesn't rely on press releases for link building, which we understand to have been ineffective for a long time, but we do send them out occasionally and want the most effective links for tracking and SEO. I'd love to hear if anyone has thoughts on these assumptions, or if anyone has different linking strategies that they have found strike the right balance of SEO and tracking considerations. Thanks!
Social Media | | Kyle_M2 -
Facebook Contests
Hey Moz Community, I've been reading some articles that Facebook no longer likes if Business Pages run contests on their Pages. I was thinking about doing something super simple with a "Like, Comment, and Share" type of an entry. Does anyone know if this is still allowed - I can't seem to find a concrete answer. Even the guidelines for Facebook seem a bit vague. I could always take the contest offline and use a landing page on my website to generate traffic but that also doesn't help with my social following. Thoughts, insights all welcome. Thanks!
Social Media | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Redirect social media links to https?
Hi fellow SEO-ers! One of the sites I'm responsible for uses a Twitter or Facebook feed on most of their pages, next to their unique content. As the tweets (twits?) and comments in some of these feeds are old, they still refer to the old Twitter and Facebook-domains using http (instead of https). These links are all automatically 301-redirected, but still make up ca. 9% of the links on the site. Do you think that this affects SEO? I doubt it, because I suppose that Google has seen this many times and understands that these links are still pointing to the same content. Although my client is prepared to write a script to auto-update all these links, I think it won't make a difference. What do you think? Thanks for your feedback!
Social Media | | corusent0 -
How to invite email contacts to like your Facebook, LinkedIn
what message to write to invite email contacts to like your Facebook, LinkedIn
Social Media | | MasonBaker0 -
Facebook Blocking Site
This is been a big annoyance for me. My site was on wordpress before and was infected with malware at one point. We were blocked by major AV, Google, and etc but we got the infection cleaned up quickly and got unblocked. Problem now is that Facebook, we are still blocked on. We try to post a link and says we are harmful. We got unblocked from facebook and we posted but than they blocked us again. We have submitted multiple requests on that form but got no answer. As a marketing agency, having our facebook page blocked to our site is bad. What can we do in this situation? We have no direct contact with anyone at facebook nor do they reply to our requests. I do own a .net to my domain, should we start using that instead of .com or what? We really need to find a way out of this. It is hurting our reputation.
Social Media | | Tech-Critic0 -
Problem to see the Reviews in facebook
Hello guys, I add the Reviews option to my company page.
Social Media | | WayneRooney
Its looks good and all, but the problem is that only the one that are admin can see it.
All the rest cant see it. Any one have experience with this ? Thank you0 -
How does Google handle URL shortening, do they pass link juice?
When I'm Social Book marking my websites I use a url shortening service such as bitly.com or onlywire.com. Do these services transfer link juice in the same ways as a direct link would do?
Social Media | | iansellman0 -
I just discovered something about Addthis shares, Twitter, and rel-canonical.
Let's say I have a page on my site with the url www.mydomain.com/page1.php?id=234. Let's say it can be accessed by the url www.mydomain.com/page-this-is-a-keyword-rich-url And let's say that the second example is what I have set as my rel-canonical. I wondered what would happen when people submitted the non-canonical url to twitter. We know that Twitter shares count for something in SEO. I didn't want things to go to waste if people were landing on my short urls and sharing them on Twitter. Well, tonight, I shared one of my own urls on Twitter. I was accidentally on the short one (not the canonical), but when I shared it via addthis the long one was shared. So, Addthis must read the canonical and use this to share. Very cool. At least to me. I may possibly be the only person on the planet that understands what I just wrote, but this is a neat discovery for me.
Social Media | | MarieHaynes5