Currently, search engines already mine user behavior – click through ratio and bounce rate – and they have a better understanding of individual users based upon their search history and page interaction data than a simple FB Like can really provide, as FB Like doesn’t really say anything about relevance with respect to any given key phrase.

There are already many companies offering packages of facebook fans i.e. ‘likes’.

Once upon a time, a site linked to another site either because the site owner liked that other site or because they were referencing something on that other site (or perhaps merely referencing the site i.e. news). Through gaming, links have become a pretty flawed system at looking at authority.

X years from now, I will post a comment on a story very similar to this saying “Once upon a time, a person “liked” a site/person either because they actually did like them or because they were referencing something on that site or person’s profile/stream (or perhaps merely referencing the site/person i.e. news). Through gaming, likes have become a pretty flawed system at looking at authority.”

Different word, same story.

When ever the search engines or the social web will come up with the factors influencing the rankings or reputation they will always have a tendency to be spammed and misused by the black hatters and people who perform illicit practices in the name of business.

But, as the search and social scenario is maturing the people are also more net and search savvy than ever before now.

I think if the likes are the new links more than the content quality increasing the content has to become more genuine.

People those who sell links may start selling likes but it all depends on the search engines and the social media site how well they combat this spam with their anti-spam algos. and let the truth prevail.

It is in fact an irony that the PageRank concept which was implemented to ensure the quality of the search results because of the keyword spamming which took place in early 2000 has been the main cause of the spammy link industry coming up .

I think there should be a WWW drive for SAYING NO TO PAID LIKES OR LINKS.

And I think each and every web developer, web marketer and SEO should take the responsibility to promote this message.

If “Likes” are becoming the new “Links” and Links were created to offer testimonials that a person or company endorsed a product or web site (or both) then it seems that true testimonials, which are writen stories that offer compliments about a product or service, are going to be out-vogued. And that is really a shame. And while “Word of Mouth” advertising is still King, Likes and Links do not come from the mouth, they come from a keyboard with algorithims and spiders doing the bulk of work, not real people!

Not sure if they will make the impact some may assume for the reasons already highlighted above.

On the other hand they, no doubt, will be factored in some way or other. It may simply be the way that reviews and other user generated content is weighted in relation to the pages both liked and indexed.

A page already in the index for a particular kw or phrase with a number of likes pointing to it from relevant posts/content might find an advantage but to what extent will only become clear over time.

I think quality of content has always been the main thing with a website. No doubt, content is king. Likes, reviews and whatever can be misleading. If you search for a good webhost, or spyware removal software or whatever, then you find all these review websites with a bunch of reviews and rankings etc. pointing you to different products. If you look closer, you will see all the links they point to point to clickbank which means they just place the top affiliate paying company

I can validate Bruce’s statements and it appears to be happening right now. I had a site with good content, doing well with traffic and rankings and I “added” a link building package of what appeared to be relevant, authority sites, manually entered link building. My site got clobbered by Google. There are no shortcuts that last is the lesson learned here.

I think the shifts in search highlight the importance for companies to establish solid web presence through a well optimized, good content site that is properly structured and linked to, and an interactive, interesting social media presence. Firms that focused ony on their site and buying links a scrambling right now whereas those who did it right are sitting pretty and waiting for the social impact on ranking.

If I was to show you some of the so-called “predictions” that Bruce Clay made over the past 10 years – you’d stop paying so much attention to what he thinks.

He has no more of an idea than anyone else out there and all of the real experts at Google, Bing, Facebook and others know this.

I totally agree with what Yatin said: “This article makes me wonder when was the last time Bruce actually got his OWN hands dirty with link building / FB / twitter marketing?”

He makes these pronouncements and many people act like he’s the Oracle of All Internet Marketing Optimization. Clay was one of the “leading experts” who couldn’t say enough about building links when it was in vogue – almost any links. Then he modified that to quality, relevant ones and so on and so on.

Just wait to see what happens for yourself.

I completely disagree with this article and agree with Gratz’ comment above. “Likes” will be much easier to spam than links, which opens up Pandora’s box with respect to manipulating search results.

Overall, I think adding social networking feedback into the search results algorithm will be “1 of more than 200 criteria” (as Google likes to say) and it’s importance will still be way below that of backlinks.

It seems to me that Google is losing the battle with real SEO masters.

From the other side I am noticing a lot of irrelevant articles in the media for some expression, on the first place on the search results and web site with a high quality content dedicated to the same phrase on the 4-5 page?!