Thoughts on Google+1s and SEO
Posted: 02 Feb 2012 at 11:29
There is an interesting blog here by Keith Brown, entitled 'Buy Links Now, Because You Can’t Buy Google +1′s Later'. Here, Peter Fisher, our resident SEO and Internet Marketing hero, responds...
Keith confirms that you can buy your way to the top right now; that’s accepted fact by everyone outside of Google’s PR team.
But then, having just said that 1000s of links from near-worthless domains does count for something these days (which certainly appears to be the case), he confidently predicts that +1s from 1000s of insignificant Google Plus accounts will count for nothing. No-one on the planet knows whether that’s true or not yet. I doubt Google themselves can agree right now.
An analogy that springs to mind is musician / critic / fan. The critic’s opinion is supposed to count for more. But what really counts in the real world is the opinion of thousands of fans.
If I were Google, every +1, no matter how insignificant the account, would be potentially as important as any other. Depending on the niche and the results set, the ‘clout’ of the account might be a factor (when returning medical advice websites you might weight +1s from people associated with an EDU domain more strongly for example). But when looking to rank sites for most B2C products (airline tickets, clothes etc) whose opinion matters most? No-one’s. The numbers are everything. Would it make sense to count +1s more strongly if the account they’re from is in constant use or linked to many others? Not to me. Just because I’ve expressed my opinion only a few times, should Google pay that opinion less heed? Is it any less valid? I don’t think so.
Social is supposed to be democratic, and the over-riding principle of democracy is that each voice should be heard equally.
And for all the hype, Google + is still largely a storm in a teacup. Plus, people are starting to notice that Google are shooting relevancy in the foot just to push it on people: http://www.focusontheuser.org
So it’s just far too early days to have any strong opinions either way in my view. People have been predicting the demise of SEO for years now, but I think they have it backwards. I personally think that the tougher a nut Google gets to crack, the more competition, the more factors you have to satisfy, the more complex it gets, the less communicative Google is, the more businesses need help!
