Last week Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land posted an article in which he posted six questions that he gave Google and Bing about how they use social data from Twitter and Facebook. The big news from this interview is that both Google and Bing confirmed in their answers that Twitter and Facebook influence one’s organic ranking.
Below are three of the six questions posted on the Search Engine Land article.
Question:
If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?”
Bing:
We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.”
Google:
“Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article.”
Question:
Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are?
Bing:
Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are.
Google:
Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life.
Question:
Do you track links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages?
Bing:
Yes. We look at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages.
Google:
We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.
So Now What?
The take home message here is that one way online marketing is no longer enough. You must have a diverse portfolio of search marketing tactics to achieve top search ranking on search engines.
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