The patent ranks social media authors along various dimensions using “a variety of statistical methods.” The abstract states that the methods will use usage metrics, social graphs, and topical graphs. The various dimensions by which authors are measured are outlined in a basic way:

• Authors who link to content that becomes popular, and do so early on, will be considered more authoritative. The first person to post a link to a big story will receive a large “expertise” score, and subsequent linkers will receive exponentially less “expertise.” All authors are then ranked by expertise score.
• Authors who post a lot of content based around a certain topic will be considered more authoritative for searches related to that topic. Microsoft’s method here is to associate keywords in social media posts with a certain topics, which are then associated with a search engine query.
• Popular and influential members of social networks will also be ranked highly for authority. This is simply a factor of how many subscribers or followers an author has, or how many people link back to an author. Consider this the crowdsource factor in the rankings.

I, like most internet users, have been a huge fan of Google search for around a decade now. I have to admit, though, that these ideas and the new Bing design look very promising. Will the rollout of the new Bing finally bring about some real search engine competition? Will Microsoft’s close relationship with Facebook put them ahead of Google when it comes to social search? 2012 is shaping up to be an interesting year for the search engine market, and that means an interesting year for those sites trying to keep up with SEO.

What do you think? Has Bing, with its new design and improved social search, finally positioned itself on par with Google? Are you worried that your website might be caught in the crossfire, or lost in the crowded, noisey realm of social SEO? Leave a comment below and let us know.

(via SEO by the Sea)

Gray discusses a search for "ferrari development car," which returns 8 out of 10 results that are the same AP article on different sites. That almost sounds like…duplicate content.

"Well Eric I’m going to show you not only did you get it wrong , but you got it very wrong, not only are big brands just as responsible for the pollution of the internet, but Google is an enabler," writes Gray as he points to the above results.

Admittedly, when Schmidt made his statement, I agreed with him. In fact, I even wrote "I couldn’t agree more." I still believe that he was right when he said that the Internet is full of garbage, and brands are the solution.

However, Gray is also right to dispute this with the example he provides. I don’t take brands being the solution to mean that different brands providing the exact same content should rank higher than others simply because of their brands. The duplicate content has to be taken into consideration.

I also don’t take it to mean that the AP has to rank over a blogger like Michael Gray (not that he’s trying to rank for this particular example). To me, Gray represents his own brand, and he has certainly gained authority within his niche because he is well-known in the industry.

To me, in the Ferrari example, perhaps something from the car maker itself would have been more appropriate to rank higher. I won’t even say that the AP story shouldn’t have ranked. But the same story should probably not be ranked for 8 out of 10 results.

That said, I think brands do help users sort through the "cesspool." It’s about trust. Businesses and individuals need to build their own brands to establish that trust and authority.

While most of the banned sites are publishing illegal content new action by the Australian Communications and Media Authority has raised concerns that the regulator could add to the lists sites that it objects to, but are not actually illegal.

For example:

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark’s list of banned websites.

The blacklist includes 1370 sites but the government is pushing to expand that list to more than 10,000 sites.

There’s a lot of really nasty content online, but is imposing $7k-a-day fines really the way a modern western democracy wants to go? What if the US followed suit? Could it even happen in a country that prides itself of a citizen’s freedom of speech?

This kind of government censorship sends shivers down my spine, how about you?

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt called the Internet a "Cesspool" Wednesday in reference to the quality of content and the amount of false information residing on it. This according to AdAge is a subject he spoke about with an audience of magazine executives at Google’s campus, where an annual industry conference was taking place.

Schmidt stressed that "Brands are the solution, not the problem…Brands are how you sort out the cesspool." 

I couldn’t agree more.

In response to an inquiry for advice about appearing more popular on Google, Schmidt told the magazine publishers, "We don’t actually want you to be successful…the fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance."

Branding and relevance. Hmm. Could it be that proving your content to be relevant  could increase the credibility of your brand, or "the authority" perhaps? Would it be safe to say that reader engagement is a reflection of relevancy as well? If more people become involved in a discussion, is that not a sign that it is more relevant? This sounds familiar.

OK, I’ll come right out and say it (yes, I’m going to bring up Bankaholic yet again). Take Bankaholic, the financial blog that was just sold to Bankrate for $15 million. Part of the reason Bankrate bought it was because it ranked well in search engines for hot key words the company was going after.

Johns Wu, the guy that sold the blog has acknowledged that user engagement was a huge factor in its success. It’s obviously relevant if it’s creating a good amount of discussion. And it’s ranking well. The name Bankaholic works as a pretty solid brand as well (some have speculated that this was also another factor of the purchase).

Schmidt is absolutely right. The Internet is a Cesspool of garbage, and relevancy and brands are the way to filter out what’s good. It’s no different than it’s ever been. Think about classic print publications. You’ve got trusted magazines and sleazy tabloids. You were always taught not to believe everything you read. The same principle applies online, it’s just that the amount of content is much greater (on both sides of the spectrum).

When discussion is taking place, relevancy is easier to pick out, and brands represent authority. Authority and engagement. Those are the keys to success, and that is the reason why new media is still a legitimate source of information despite people gaming the system to try and take advantage of it in unethical ways.

It Doesn’t Stop with Content Sites

Let’s look at the concept from a broader business standpoint, because these principles don’t only apply to content sites. They also apply to eCommerce businesses or even the web aspects of traditional brick and mortar businesses. I don’t care if your site only leads to selling products on eBay or Amazon, you must have ways of establishing your authority, which creates trust with potential customers. A blog or even “expert articles” that give tips and advice can be a good way to accomplish this. When a customer senses that the people running a site know what they’re talking about, they are more likely to purchase products from that site.

You can use blogs to engage site visitors and you can also integrate Web 2.0 type apps. For example, Best Buy has just launched an "enterprise-Twitter"-style application called Mix aimed at employees. Similar tools can be available for customers that will create an interactive environment that helps build a bond with customers, often prior to the sale. Anything that can help you develop a dialogue with your potential customers is going to help inspire trust.

A recent survey found that 81% of consumers don’t trust small online businesses. Authority and engagement are ways to overcome this. For more on earning customer trust online, see my seven steps for small businesses. How do you earn trust from your customers? What methods do you employ to engage users? How do you gain authority in your niche? Share your ideas with the rest of us. Engage!

Should English to English page translations inherit domain authority from another domain? I don’t want to out anybody, but I see way too many tag pages ranking in Yahoo!’s search results. The easiest way they can improve their search results is to simply delist any page with tag in the URL.

If they continue down this path inside a few months they will link to nothing but internal site search / tag pages on other sites. Where is the value, innovation, or thought process in that? What percent of Yahoo! searchers want to see WordPress.com tags pages and how many Yahoo! Pipes pages are tagged with a brand name? What does a searcher do when they land on a page like this?

If you are going to trust user generated content on authority sites, expect a lot of users to create content just for Yahoo!.

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For “normal” people these problems are real, however with Google a double standard exists for trusted authority websites.

Case and point the SERP for [Green Real Estate] screen shot below:

The #7 listing goes to this page on Forbes.com

The #10 listing goes to this page on MSN.com

Ok first off I don’t mean to imply that MSN is scraping Forbes, I’m quite sure there is a syndication arrangement in place and no copyright laws are being broken.

However the content is identical, so identical that Google should have no problem realizing one is a copy of the other, however they don’t. The simple fact is that right now trust and authority are weighted so high within the algo that they completely trump all other factors.

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