Below is live coverage of the Social Media Signals in Search panel from the SES San Francisco 2011 conference. This coverage is provided by Shanon Woodruff at RankSmart.
Disclaimer: The coverage is brought to you in real time, using a custom live blogging tool. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments for inclusion into the live coverage. During the live event, live notes will auto-scroll with newest entries at top. After the session is complete the archive version will have the oldest entries at the top. We ask you to please excuse any typos, as these are live notes.
The winds of change are blowing. Both Google and Bing are making rapid moves to integrate social elements into their search results. Bing has a strong deal in place with Facebook and is leveraging that as much as it can. Google has launched its +1 button for web sites and is likely to make more significant moves. The social sites themselves are making rapid changes. Facebook offers Like buttons, Send buttons and Share buttons. Twitter has now launched their Follow button. How are all these changes going to affect you as a publisher? This can't miss session will give you insight into what is happening and how it affects your web site publishing strategy.
Moderator:
Richard Zwicky, Independent Consultant,
Speakers:
Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple Consulting
Duane Forrester, Senior Program Manager, Bing
He will be covering both the mechanics and a case study
How ranking used to work:
24% Trust/Authority
22% Link Popularity of Page
20% InBound Anchor Text
15% Key Word Usage
7% Traffic / Click Through Data
6% Social Graph Metrics
5 % registration / Hosting
What it might look like Now:
20% Trust / Authority of Domain
18% Trust / Authority of Page
16% Inbound Anchor Text
12% Engagement Signals
11% Key word usage
10% Content
9% Social
4% Registration
Bing will also change the ranking for you based on things that your friends have liked, confirmed by Stephan White of Bing.
Location focused searches - Bing will leverage the Facebook feed
Bing uses the wisdom of the crowd to show how many people in your network likes what content. For example, Search "New York Post" and it will show you how many of your friends have "Liked" articles on that site.
Anything that demonstrates interest in your site or content will be used in your ranking.
Twitter Authority:
-Number of relevant follower
-CTR of links you share by relevant followers
-Ration of followers to followed
-RT by relevant followers
-Age of account
Koult.com is a great way to measure your influence
-Blog was semi-dormant
-8 posts between Sept. 2010 - May 2011
-Hey, I was busy
-Started back up in May 2011
-Wrote a great blog post
-Was RTed by an influential user
-Did not promote in any other way
-Rank 4th in key search term for the article
What is necessary for success in for social in search:
-Good Content
-Social Connection
-Leverage Important Influencers
Socializing Search
Why is search moving in the direction of social?
What is missing in search? Emotion
Search can be very technical, and really has not taken much emotion into consideration. But things are beginning to change.
Why? Because people put more trust in those individuals that they know.
For example:
90% of people seek advice from family and friends before making a decision
80% of people delay making a purchase online before talking to someone
So what does this mean? Opinion Matters!
The Case for Social: The increase in the creation of content
Example: 25 Billion Tweets sent on Twitter in 2010
We Use: Trusted Friends; Collective IQ; Enabling Conversation
People Share > Content gets processed > Public Information comes to Bing, real time > Content processing and indexing > Ranking Annotation > User Experience
Reputation = More than Followers:
Users' Attributes: Friends, Followers, Follows
Users' Actions: Retweets, Replies, Others that share the some link, Likes
You have to be organic!
Social Spam?
Reciprocal friending is no more beneficial than reciprocal linking
Social Spam Behavior:
Spammy communities are highly visible - don't be a part of one
Tweets and Posts = Quality Links
When optimizing your site for search, you invest in these major ares:
-Quality
-Trust
-Popularity
-Timeliness
Manage your social media, or social media will manage you!
-Content
-Social
-Links
Think about how to build better websites. Future-proof your website.
Q: Site has 10-13 different areas, can you talk about changing FB meta tags.
A: What is the best answer to a query. You should focus on what is being queried, what are people looking for. Make it as easy as possible. Search engines focus on the speed to the answer.
Q: Does size matter in follower size?
A: No, you have to realize that social can bring people through the door. It is all abut becoming personally involved. In social media it's quality over quantity. Build your trust base. Links, quality, targeting - become an authority.