It’s now confirmed that both Google and Bing have something they call “Social Authority” in place that ranks and values Social Media Buzz which affects a domains page rank. It’s by no means the most important ranking factor but it does have an influence on the page rank.
Bad news for SEO-people trying to get on social media channels and spamming out links, these will not rank or influence your domains page rank. Prove me wrong. The more authentic you are, the more value you bring your community, the stronger Social Authority you will build at Google and Bing.
Here’s a list of questions asked by Danny Sullivan to Google and Bing search officials:
- Are Regular Search Results affected by social media buzz? Google (Yes), Bing (Yes)
- Are Social/Realtime Search Results affected by buzz? Google (Yes), Bing (Yes)
- Are Twitter links taken into account (aka do they pass link juice)? Google (Limited), Bing (Limited)
- Are Facebook links taken into account? Google (Limited), Bing (Limited)
- Is there an Authority Rank for Twitter Profiles? Google (Yes), Bing (Yes)
- Is there an Authority Rank for Facebook Profiles? Google (Yes), Bing (No)
- Does the Twitter Authority have an impact on the weight of the links that are shared? Google (Yes), Bing (Yes)
- Does the Facebook Authority have an impact on the weight of the links that are shared? Google (Yes), Bing (No)
Note that Microsoft has a big stake in Facebook…
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