Google hating on Social Signals... or lying?

ThopHayt

ThopHayt

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https://www.seroundtable.com/google-social-signals-ranking-20803.html

So Google is claiming that social signals, shares, tweets, and the like have NOOOO impact on a page's ranking. From this it appears that they are making the claim that their algorithm absolutely does not take social links directly into its ranking equation. Meaning sheerly from a linkjuice standpoint that social links HAVE NONE.

So may I say that I call bullshit. Based on my usage it is clear that social signals are quite relevant. So I have to ask myself why Google would be saying this? Are they trying to convince people to stop spamming by saying it won't work? Or have they worded this cunningly enough to not be a lie?
 
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They dont have any control on social sites. If they write algorithm based on any social networking site, they have to rewrite entire algorithm if any of the site closed and they dont have access to posts if user sets privacy to private. Thats why they dont treat social signals seperately except gplus because they've full control and access. They treat social signals same as normal links.
 
Interesting. I have noticed minimal impact from the social work I have done.
 
It's true that Social Signals have minimum effect on rankings however I think it is necessary have them as to diversify the link profile and keep it natural in Google's Eye :)
 
Can anyone verify that Google Plus shares are treated differently than say Facebook shares?
 
ThopHayt said:
Can anyone verify that Google Plus shares are treated differently than say Facebook shares?
Click to expand...

As I can remember when a post was shared by a Google+ account it had a better position in search results, but, not sure about that today because I didn't see any Google+ profile in search results anymore. Also we must consider the future "shutdown" of Google+.

I agree with Google because is easy to buy fake likes and shares over there, so, basically if they consider social interactions as a positive indicator for ranking. Anyway, this can change in the future, right?

BTW: hi, I'm new here.
 
ThopHayt said:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-social-signals-ranking-20803.html

So Google is claiming that social signals, shares, tweets, and the like have NOOOO impact on a page's ranking. From this it appears that they are making the claim that their algorithm absolutely does not take social links directly into its ranking equation. Meaning sheerly from a linkjuice standpoint that social links HAVE NONE.

So may I say that I call bullshit. Based on my usage it is clear that social signals are quite relevant. So I have to ask myself why Google would be saying this? Are they trying to convince people to stop spamming by saying it won't work? Or have they worded this cunningly enough to not be a lie?
Click to expand...


I belief Google is right on this... social signals is not a ranking factor, it is to easy to manipulate like most metrics SEO's and webmasters think have a major affect on their rankings

However..... That being said....

I do belief that there is a red flag if you have 1000 quality links and no shares or/and tweets to speak of, so i belief -because it makes the most sense in my opinion- that Google is using social signals as a way to validate your links, i have no real hard data on this hypothesis, as i find it hard to come up with a full proof test, and come to conclusion (because of all the variables) but it makes so much sense that i am going with it, if it isn't the case then no harm is done anyway.
 
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fc-dh said:
I belief Google is right on this... social signals is not a ranking factor, it is to easy to manipulate like most metrics SEO's and webmasters think have a major affect on their rankings

However..... That being said....

I do belief that there is a red flag if you have 1000 quality links and no shares or/and tweets to speak of, so i belief -because it makes the most sense in my opinion- that Google is using social signals as a way to validate your links, i have no real hard data on this as i find it hard to test it, and come to a hard conclusion or theory (because of all the variables) but it makes so much sense that i am going with it, if it isn't the case then no harm is done anyway.
Click to expand...

What he said. I said the same thing last time this topic came up...
 
Lots of benefits of social signals. In my views social signals is just because we can keep our backlink profile look natural.
 
fc-dh said:
I do belief that there is a red flag if you have 1000 quality links and no shares or/and tweets to speak of, so i belief -because it makes the most sense in my opinion- that Google is using social signals as a way to validate your links, i have no real hard data on this hypothesis, as i find it hard to come up with a full proof test, and come to conclusion (because of all the variables) but it makes so much sense that i am going with it, if it isn't the case then no harm is done anyway.
Click to expand...


I believe that makes sense. I think Google knows how EASY it is to fake signals. BUT... they don't want to make their links toxic like they have with other abused links in the past (wiki links anybody). So maybe what they do is ignore them in terms of link juice... while at the same time doing what you said: using them as a metric similar to traffic. Something to validate a page with.
 
I personally dont feel like Social Signals have any kind of impact as that is something out of control from google. They have control over Google+ and there are chances that they take Google+ upvotes as signals but I cant guarantee about others :/

Anyone can buy thousands of likes and rank? You must be kidding lol..
 
Ah, I think this "discussion" is silly. Turn a faucet on some time real slowly, and get a sense for how social signals lube the link chain. Big G is not exactly lying, but not telling the whole story as always. Do keep in mind it is their business model to keep people in the dark about their overall ranking algorithms. Social signals are definitely relevant, and often point the way for G to find the links that exist pointing towards ones sites. Additionally, as has been pointed it - they are and can be used as a validation mechanism.

Of course you could go run some tests, but seriously ... it's a bit overkill when thousands of people have already run the tests, and people continue to buy and sell social signals. It speaks for itself.
 
fc-dh said:
...using them as a metric similar to traffic. Something to validate a page with.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%. There needs to be some kind of measurable user engagement to check out with the backlinks.
 
Some of the top ranking sites in my niche barely have social signals, one of the top sites doesn't even appear to have a facebook page. I can see it being a vallidation thing like traffic but also they are pretty noisy signals and they can easily be spammed with stuff like fivver, and g00gle doesn't have access to twitter and facebooks feeds so I doubt g00gle uses it much to rank sites.
 
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