5 ms·

Just trying to decide the politest way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings. Let's start with correlation != causation: ht

Just trying to decide the politest way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings. Let's start with correlation != causation: http://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/ But it would probably be better to point to this 2011 post (also from SEOMoz/Moz) from two years ago in which a similar claim was made about Facebook shares: http://moz.com/blog/does-google-use-facebook-shares-to-influence-search-rankings http://moz.com/blog/does-google-use-facebook-shares-to-influ... . From that blog post from two years ago: "One of the most interesting findings from our 2011 Ranking Factors analysis was the high correlation between Facebook shares and Google US search position." This all came to a head at the SMX Advanced search conference in 2011 where Rand Fishkin presented his claims. I did a polite debunk of the idea that Google used Facebook shares in our web ranking at the conference, leading to this section in the 2011 blog post: "Rand pointed out that Google does have some access to Facebook data overall and set up a small-scale test to determine if Google would index content that was solely shared on Facebook. To date, that page has not been indexed, despite having quite a few shares (64 according to the OpenGraph)." If you make compelling content, people will link to it, like it, share it on Facebook, +1 it, etc. But that doesn't mean that Google is using those signals in our ranking. Rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much better spent making great content.

johnward 13y ago
Pointing out that Facebook likes don't increasing rankings doesn't debunk Google +1s. Obviously you know if they do or do not affect rankings. I'm not sure you would tell us if they actually were used as a signal in rankings because that would lead SEO's to focus on +1's in a way similar to what happened with pagerank. It could also lead to +1 spamming/exploiting. Not that I'm going to believe you anyway, but I just want to clear this up. Are you, Matt Cutts, saying that +1s make no difference in Google rankings?
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  johnward, I know of at least one other SEO that has been doing a more rigorous study of whether more +1s lead to a higher ranking. I suspect that study might come out in the next month or two. Suffice it to say that I would be very skeptical of anyone who claimed that more +1s led to a higher search ranking in Google's web results.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    I may be misunderstanding the basics, but the article implies that putting a post onto plus gives you a "perfect" page for SEO. Which means that any links to it will raise it's score more than any other page hosted anywhere else. (They fail to follow through with posts on G+ are naturally likely to get more +1s than likes, thus presumably debunking the whole correlation issue like you say. But anyway) So my takeaway (which I am not sure if you are challenging) is that posts on plus.google did better than a presumably control sample on facebook - and the article incorrectly ascribes this to +1s. You seem to be saying, yes it did do better but its not because of +1s, its just better. But is it better content or is it better SEO-ness of the page. Thats the part I would like to see these studies show - how they manage the control portion. How they control for quality of the content? Because if posting the same content on G+ and on a.n.other site gets you significantly more pagerank, then its really hard to argue not to do that. (I quite accept the "its not +1's goddammit" argument)
  - anon1385 13y ago
    I notice that you avoided answering the direct question…
    - umsm 13y ago
      I believe he answered the question in the original comment.
      - johnward 13y ago
        "Are you, Matt Cutts, saying that +1s make no difference in Google rankings?" I don't think he answered it. He basically avoided the question as expected. Not that I have anything against Cutts. There are probably things he can and cannot say or maybe he doesn't know.
        umsm 13y ago
        I believe that people that want to avoid a question do best to answer it using terminology which can be interpreted in many ways. Politicians have been known to do this. That being said, he probably answered the question as well as he can or wants to. It's pointless to nitpick.
xendo 13y ago
>> Let's start with correlation != causation: http://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/ I like this one better: http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-will-be-your-favorite-chart-today http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-...
nonchalance 13y ago
Actually, they quoted that point in this article: > Back in 2011, folks may remember the controversy that erupted when Moz found a similar correlation between higher rankings and Facebook activity. At the time, Google claimed they didn't use Facebook shares for ranking websites. Dr. Peters concluded that the relationship between Facebook activity and higher rankings was likely not directly related, but probably caused by overlapping factors such as links and high-quality content. > Now in 2013, there's strong reason to suspect it's different with Google+, and that the relationship between +1s and higher rankings goes beyond correlation into the territory of actual causation. While Facebook / twitter are lagging signals from google's access perspective, G+ is contemporaneous: "Posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately"
thurn 13y ago
So, why not? Has it been experimentally shown that +1-based ranking performs worse?
- aioprisan 13y ago
  you're missing the point. there are many useless things that can be done that won't hurt SEO per se, so can can go ahead and do them, but the ROI isn't there to justify it.
tgb 13y ago
Which is why all of those points were addressed in the article! In fact, that's why the article didn't make the claim that Google is doing anything unusual in handling G+ links and shares - just that G+ is laid out in a way that makes it more relevant to existing SEO techniques.
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  Most of the initial discussion on this thread seemed to take from the blog post the idea that more Google +1s led to higher web ranking. I wanted to preemptively tackle that perception.
  - jennita 13y ago
    Why not state that the other items listed in the post are true? (Yes, I work at Moz)
fluidcruft 13y ago
I agree. Mechanistically, I'd speculate that +1's follow and reinforce pre-existing web rankings. It seems very probable to me that people are most likely to +1 the pages that are found first in web searches (i.e. those that have high rank).
sullivandanny 13y ago
Of course, for personalized results, Google+ activity can have a huge impact on rankings. At times, it can trump any other factor. For personalized results. Important caveat, but then again, we're probably at the point where more people see personalized results than don't.
superjeff 13y ago
What about the claim that G+ links pass value? Clearly they're no-followed, but has Google prevented them in passing value in some other way (algorithmically, perhaps?), as is widely believed to be the case for affiliate links?
cyrusshepard 13y ago
Cyrus here (the author) Thanks Matt, I think we both agree that Google doesn't use +1's directly in your algorithm. But are you implying there are no SEO benefits to posting popular content on Google+? Google does use PageRank and anchor text, 2 things present in Google+ posts that aren't passed as easily in Facebook and Twitter. It seems to me that a popular post on Google+, shared and linked to by well known authorities, is just like earning a high authority editorial link - and this is a bit different than most other social media platforms. Now, if you tell me you treat Google+ differently in a way that blocks link juice, blocks anchor text and doesn't pass link equity, then I think I would have to rethink my thesis. Regardless, I think we're both on the same page here. The goal is not to accumulate a massive amounts of +1's (and I'll amend my post to make that clear) but to share high quality content on Google+ and build your influence through this channel, and this can lead to real world success. My argument is that Google+ as a platform passes actual SEO value, and I don't think this is a bad thing or something that needs to be debunked. Feel free to disagree if I'm way off base here.
- anon1385 13y ago
  >The goal is […] to share high quality content on Google+ and build your influence through this channel, and this can lead to real world success. i.e. if you don't use Google+ you will lose out in rankings compared to sites that do. So the SEO advice about "make good content people want to see" needs to be amended to "make good content but make sure you share it on the closed proprietary social network run by the search engine".
  - thezilch 13y ago
    Rubbish. Make good content, and make sure to share it to everyone that will find it good -- those following you on social networks.
    - anon1385 13y ago
      As far as I'm aware nearly all social networks require you to join them before people can 'follow' you on them. So I don't see how what you said contradicts my point : if you don't make a G+ account you are going to lose out in organic search ranking.
garysieling 13y ago
My experience has been that making better content is great for getting more readers, but not for SEO, which in the long term is fine because it removes the risk of having to chase algorithm changes. When I switched from writing to fill holes in search results to writing for specific communities (including g+ groups) my readership shot up, but the SEO part has stayed pretty flat. It's possible I have something set up incorrectly, or that what I'm writing isn't something people are searching for, I'm not really sure. I put some charts up here that show this- http://garysieling.com/blog/google-1s-and-search-rankings http://garysieling.com/blog/google-1s-and-search-rankings
- threeseed 13y ago
  Exactly. Great content is often succinct and simple to comprehend. SEO wants your content to be full of unnecessary keywords that match the search terms which conflicts with this.
  - andreascarpetta 13y ago
    it depends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)
  - darrelljason 13y ago
    >Great content is often succinct and simple to comprehend. >SEO wants your content to be full of unnecessary keywords that match the search terms which conflicts with this. That's where it pays to have an awesome copywriter who can craft in those keywords, keep it succinct and unnoticeable to the reader yet let Google know what the post's about. People are associating all the old SEO tactics to the new search. They're incompatible. SEO is more about quality content than ever - and that doesn't just mean writing something that makes sense and isn't stuffed with keywords. SEOs who don't get this by now won't. Ever.
humanspecies 13y ago
I just thought I'd drop by and say fuck you Matt Cutts. Hope you get fired for your payday loans spam.
Zoe-Slater 13y ago
Hi Matt We created some compelling that got lots of natural coverage both on social networks and news sites and we seem to have been punished for it! http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/iRzi6RRN8Co http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webma... Thoughts?
NickKer 13y ago
Just a thought: When publishing correlation articles, maybe responsible authors should set up some kind of verification system where the reader must demonstrate that they understand that correlation does not equal causation before they are even allowed to read the article. Otherwise, we end up with all these knuckleheads running around saying "Moz said that +1s are the key to high rankings and you have to have lots of them! Who wants to buy 10,000 plus ones from me?"
StefanBielau 13y ago
With regards to the ranking of an app in Google Play, would you make the same statement?
seogroup 13y ago
Nobody has mentioned how sassy Matt's statement was... "Just trying to decide the POLITEST way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings." ....does that mean has thinking about getting nasty?
maribel 13y ago
Thank GOD for this. I hate social media and rather focus on my site.
JohnnyM77 13y ago
Thank you Matt Cutts for debunking the myth that Facebook likes and shares have any effect on Google rankings. This has been an issue of some debate between me and my friends.

johnward 13y ago

Pointing out that Facebook likes don't increasing rankings doesn't debunk Google +1s. Obviously you know if they do or do not affect rankings. I'm not sure you would tell us if they actually were used as a signal in rankings because that would lead SEO's to focus on +1's in a way similar to what happened with pagerank. It could also lead to +1 spamming/exploiting. Not that I'm going to believe you anyway, but I just want to clear this up. Are you, Matt Cutts, saying that +1s make no difference in Google rankings?

Matt_Cutts 13y ago
johnward, I know of at least one other SEO that has been doing a more rigorous study of whether more +1s lead to a higher ranking. I suspect that study might come out in the next month or two. Suffice it to say that I would be very skeptical of anyone who claimed that more +1s led to a higher search ranking in Google's web results.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I may be misunderstanding the basics, but the article implies that putting a post onto plus gives you a "perfect" page for SEO. Which means that any links to it will raise it's score more than any other page hosted anywhere else. (They fail to follow through with posts on G+ are naturally likely to get more +1s than likes, thus presumably debunking the whole correlation issue like you say. But anyway) So my takeaway (which I am not sure if you are challenging) is that posts on plus.google did better than a presumably control sample on facebook - and the article incorrectly ascribes this to +1s. You seem to be saying, yes it did do better but its not because of +1s, its just better. But is it better content or is it better SEO-ness of the page. Thats the part I would like to see these studies show - how they manage the control portion. How they control for quality of the content? Because if posting the same content on G+ and on a.n.other site gets you significantly more pagerank, then its really hard to argue not to do that. (I quite accept the "its not +1's goddammit" argument)
- anon1385 13y ago
  I notice that you avoided answering the direct question…
  - umsm 13y ago
    I believe he answered the question in the original comment.
    - johnward 13y ago
      "Are you, Matt Cutts, saying that +1s make no difference in Google rankings?" I don't think he answered it. He basically avoided the question as expected. Not that I have anything against Cutts. There are probably things he can and cannot say or maybe he doesn't know.
      - umsm 13y ago
        I believe that people that want to avoid a question do best to answer it using terminology which can be interpreted in many ways. Politicians have been known to do this. That being said, he probably answered the question as well as he can or wants to. It's pointless to nitpick.

xendo 13y ago

>> Let's start with correlation != causation: http://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/ I like this one better: http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-will-be-your-favorite-chart-today http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-...

nonchalance 13y ago

Actually, they quoted that point in this article: > Back in 2011, folks may remember the controversy that erupted when Moz found a similar correlation between higher rankings and Facebook activity. At the time, Google claimed they didn't use Facebook shares for ranking websites. Dr. Peters concluded that the relationship between Facebook activity and higher rankings was likely not directly related, but probably caused by overlapping factors such as links and high-quality content. > Now in 2013, there's strong reason to suspect it's different with Google+, and that the relationship between +1s and higher rankings goes beyond correlation into the territory of actual causation. While Facebook / twitter are lagging signals from google's access perspective, G+ is contemporaneous: "Posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately"

thurn 13y ago

So, why not? Has it been experimentally shown that +1-based ranking performs worse?

aioprisan 13y ago
you're missing the point. there are many useless things that can be done that won't hurt SEO per se, so can can go ahead and do them, but the ROI isn't there to justify it.

tgb 13y ago

Which is why all of those points were addressed in the article! In fact, that's why the article didn't make the claim that Google is doing anything unusual in handling G+ links and shares - just that G+ is laid out in a way that makes it more relevant to existing SEO techniques.

Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Most of the initial discussion on this thread seemed to take from the blog post the idea that more Google +1s led to higher web ranking. I wanted to preemptively tackle that perception.
- jennita 13y ago
  Why not state that the other items listed in the post are true? (Yes, I work at Moz)

fluidcruft 13y ago

I agree. Mechanistically, I'd speculate that +1's follow and reinforce pre-existing web rankings. It seems very probable to me that people are most likely to +1 the pages that are found first in web searches (i.e. those that have high rank).

sullivandanny 13y ago

Of course, for personalized results, Google+ activity can have a huge impact on rankings. At times, it can trump any other factor. For personalized results. Important caveat, but then again, we're probably at the point where more people see personalized results than don't.

superjeff 13y ago

What about the claim that G+ links pass value? Clearly they're no-followed, but has Google prevented them in passing value in some other way (algorithmically, perhaps?), as is widely believed to be the case for affiliate links?

cyrusshepard 13y ago

Cyrus here (the author) Thanks Matt, I think we both agree that Google doesn't use +1's directly in your algorithm. But are you implying there are no SEO benefits to posting popular content on Google+? Google does use PageRank and anchor text, 2 things present in Google+ posts that aren't passed as easily in Facebook and Twitter. It seems to me that a popular post on Google+, shared and linked to by well known authorities, is just like earning a high authority editorial link - and this is a bit different than most other social media platforms. Now, if you tell me you treat Google+ differently in a way that blocks link juice, blocks anchor text and doesn't pass link equity, then I think I would have to rethink my thesis. Regardless, I think we're both on the same page here. The goal is not to accumulate a massive amounts of +1's (and I'll amend my post to make that clear) but to share high quality content on Google+ and build your influence through this channel, and this can lead to real world success. My argument is that Google+ as a platform passes actual SEO value, and I don't think this is a bad thing or something that needs to be debunked. Feel free to disagree if I'm way off base here.

anon1385 13y ago
>The goal is […] to share high quality content on Google+ and build your influence through this channel, and this can lead to real world success. i.e. if you don't use Google+ you will lose out in rankings compared to sites that do. So the SEO advice about "make good content people want to see" needs to be amended to "make good content but make sure you share it on the closed proprietary social network run by the search engine".
- thezilch 13y ago
  Rubbish. Make good content, and make sure to share it to everyone that will find it good -- those following you on social networks.
  - anon1385 13y ago
    As far as I'm aware nearly all social networks require you to join them before people can 'follow' you on them. So I don't see how what you said contradicts my point : if you don't make a G+ account you are going to lose out in organic search ranking.

garysieling 13y ago

My experience has been that making better content is great for getting more readers, but not for SEO, which in the long term is fine because it removes the risk of having to chase algorithm changes. When I switched from writing to fill holes in search results to writing for specific communities (including g+ groups) my readership shot up, but the SEO part has stayed pretty flat. It's possible I have something set up incorrectly, or that what I'm writing isn't something people are searching for, I'm not really sure. I put some charts up here that show this- http://garysieling.com/blog/google-1s-and-search-rankings http://garysieling.com/blog/google-1s-and-search-rankings

threeseed 13y ago
Exactly. Great content is often succinct and simple to comprehend. SEO wants your content to be full of unnecessary keywords that match the search terms which conflicts with this.
- andreascarpetta 13y ago
  it depends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)
- darrelljason 13y ago
  >Great content is often succinct and simple to comprehend. >SEO wants your content to be full of unnecessary keywords that match the search terms which conflicts with this. That's where it pays to have an awesome copywriter who can craft in those keywords, keep it succinct and unnoticeable to the reader yet let Google know what the post's about. People are associating all the old SEO tactics to the new search. They're incompatible. SEO is more about quality content than ever - and that doesn't just mean writing something that makes sense and isn't stuffed with keywords. SEOs who don't get this by now won't. Ever.

humanspecies 13y ago

I just thought I'd drop by and say fuck you Matt Cutts. Hope you get fired for your payday loans spam.

Zoe-Slater 13y ago

Hi Matt We created some compelling that got lots of natural coverage both on social networks and news sites and we seem to have been punished for it! http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/iRzi6RRN8Co http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webma... Thoughts?

NickKer 13y ago

Just a thought: When publishing correlation articles, maybe responsible authors should set up some kind of verification system where the reader must demonstrate that they understand that correlation does not equal causation before they are even allowed to read the article. Otherwise, we end up with all these knuckleheads running around saying "Moz said that +1s are the key to high rankings and you have to have lots of them! Who wants to buy 10,000 plus ones from me?"

StefanBielau 13y ago

With regards to the ranking of an app in Google Play, would you make the same statement?

seogroup 13y ago

Nobody has mentioned how sassy Matt's statement was... "Just trying to decide the POLITEST way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings." ....does that mean has thinking about getting nasty?

maribel 13y ago

Thank GOD for this. I hate social media and rather focus on my site.

JohnnyM77 13y ago

Thank you Matt Cutts for debunking the myth that Facebook likes and shares have any effect on Google rankings. This has been an issue of some debate between me and my friends.