The Impact of Social Signals in Search

January 1, 2012

Last year both Google and Bing announced that they would be using social signals to help rank search results. Econsultancy reported on the impact of social signals on digital marketing in the article “Social Signals in Search: What is the Impact?”

According to the article, a recent survey found that only 25 percent of company marketers currently regard social signals as ‘very important’ for determining search rankings. However, when asked how important they would be in three years’ time, the percentage increased to 57 percent.

Andrew Girdwood, Media Innovations Director at bigmouthmedia, said:

Social signals are used, at the very least, to validate traditional link signals. For example, a page that appears to have many inbound links and is relatively young but which has earned no social signals is a statistical outlier. Google is upfront about being suspicious about statistical outliers. Avoiding Google’s suspicion is important in SEO. What’s not in doubt is the ability social media successes have at showing content worthy of links to a large community of people able to create those links. All SEO campaigns should have social elements.

With the invention of Google+, the first serious combination of search and social, businesses will be forced to confront the importance of social signals. Our view: social is no silver bullet.

Jasmine Ashton, January 1, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

Comments

2 Responses to “The Impact of Social Signals in Search”

  1. » Social Media Wrap-up Jan 15 on January 15th, 2012 8:45 am

    […] The Impact of Social Signals in Search Beyond Search: A recent survey found that only 25 percent of company marketers currently regard social signals as ‘very important’ for determining search rankings. However, when asked how important they would be in three years’ time, the percentage increased to 57 percent. […]

  2. Social Media Wrap-up Jan 15 on January 15th, 2012 10:45 am

    […] The Impact of Social Signals in Search Beyond Search: A recent survey found that only 25 percent of company marketers currently regard social signals as ‘very important’ for determining search rankings. However, when asked how important they would be in three years’ time, the percentage increased to 57 percent. […]

  • Archives

  • Recent Posts

  • Meta