Should +1s and Facebook “likes” be used as significant ranking signals by search engines? Share your thoughts here.

In a recent article, we asked if Google’s +1 button is the new PageRank. As Google uses the data from the button as a ranking signal, +1′s will no doubt be coveted more and more by any site owner looking for increased search visibility and traffic.

As discussed in that article, just as you’ve seen plenty trying to boost their PageRank through black hat tactics, it seems highly likely that these same people will try to exploit the +1 button. Google’s main weapon agains this appears to be tying the +1s to your actual identity, by using a strict profile naming policy.

Google wants to know who is doing this +1ing, which should help cut down on abuse.

Bing’s Duane Forrester wrote a blog post this week talking about a similar topic in the realm of abusing the social signals that search engines use to try and determine what results to show users. Forrester’s focus was on the concept of the “like” farm – basically the social equivalent of the link farm.

Amazingly, though, people think this approach works,” says Forrester. ”The rationale being that social signals matter to search, they can ramp up the volume of the ‘like’ signal in Facebook, causing a related boost in rankings.  The logic may seem fine, but when you recall that we can see sudden explosions of links as spammy, it’s easy to understand how we can see sudden explosions of likes as spammy as well.  To be fair, there’s more to it than that.”

“Anyone could suddenly ‘go viral’ and accumulate a lot of likes very quickly, so we look beyond just like/time to find patterns,” he explains. “And if there is one thing a search engine is good at, it’s seeing patterns online.  Like farms tend to be built around a core network of accounts.  You pay someone to like your site, content or whatever, and they go out across their network and like you.  It’s artificial and we know it.  Organic likes rarely follow obvious patterns.  In fact, if there’s a pattern to organic liking, it’s one built around chaos.  Like farms, however, no matter their size, end up looking obvious by comparison.  In the image below, you can see what an accumulation of likes look like to us when graphed.”

He shares the following graph depicting like activity with the red dots representing a like’s origin and the blue dots representing friends liking the same item. He says the differences between like farm activity and organic activity are “very obvious”.

“In most cases, if we spot like farm activity, we simply ignore the signal,” says Forrester.  “Again, you may have paid for a service which is bringing you no value in boosting your search results. This also points out why it is so important that you manage your social media program.  At the very least, if you are outsourcing the management of your social program, you need to keep an eye on things.  Short cuts can add up eroding any value you were trying to achieve.”

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it is impossible to game the search engines using social media. Black hatters will always look for (and probably find) new ways to exploit the system for their gain, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.

Interestingly, a report out from BrightEdge finds that about half of the largest 10,000 sites on the web don’t even display any kind of social sharing link or buttons at all. This is very surprising. As one WebProNews reader commented, “I find that unbelievable! The search engines have flat out admitted that social signals are a ranking factors. Why would a site owner not want to include social share buttons? Let your readers do some of the heavy lifting and get your content promoted in their social networks!”

I would strongly advise making the buttons accessible. Just have the content to give users a reason to click them. Then maybe you won’t have to worry about trying to game the system.

Do you think Google and Bing can keep social button abuse at bay? Tell us what you think.

Not only will the new Bing with Facebook simply show you that your friends like a certain result, but the search engine will use the information is gleans from Facebook to actually modify your search results.

Here is a detailed description of what the Facebook integration will look like on Bing, courtesy of the official Bing blog:

“Liked” Results, Answers & Sites

Instantly see which stories, content and sites your Facebook friends have “liked,” from news stories, celebrities, movies, bands, brands and more. With the “thumbs up” from your friends you can jump right to the stuff that matters the most to you. Bing shows the faces of up to three of your friends that like a search result, offering a visual and virtual seal of approval from your trusted social network.

Personalized Results

Bing delivers a more personalized search experience by using the interests shown by your friends. Now you won’t miss potentially interesting information that may have been buried deep within the search results. Bing will surface results, which may typically have been on page three or four, higher in its results based on stuff your friends have liked. And, how often do you go beyond page one of the results?

Popular Sites

Bing shows well-liked content, including trending topics, articles and Facebook fan pages, from sites across the web, to help you dig in and quickly find exactly what you’re looking for. Looking for a great recipe? Now when you search for a recipe site, you’ll see what recipes people have liked on that site, allowing you to cut through the clutter and find the perfect recipe for dinner.

Integration of Social Messages

Bing not only shows you what your friends like and share online, but also what major brands and companies are saying. For example, when you search for Avis, the answer on Bing will integrate any recent Facebook posts alerting you to a new deal.

Bing is also integrating Facebook profile search into the engine, so that when you search for a person, Bing will provide a detailed “bio snapshot” of the person based one their Facebook profile.

Bing is basing this partnership on the idea that recommendations from friends and family are what people want when making decisions. This shift towards social search might even be a bigger deal than it initially looks like on the surface. Bing says that “search remains largely driven by facts and links” and that this Facebook integration means that “it’s time to change that.” This may in fact be the first step in search becoming a truly social experience.

As they say above, they are surfacing results, possibly from page three or four, to page one based on their popularity with friends. Is this indeed an algorithm change?

Will you log into Facebook and use Bing’s new social search?

<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&#038;vid=243216f7-9941-4f48-a2d0-2065e06a47b5&#038;src=SLPl:embed::uuids&#038;fg=sharenoembed" target="_new"title="Facebook Friends Now Fueling Faster Decisions on Bing">Video: Facebook Friends Now Fueling Faster Decisions on Bing</a>

Have you noticed anything with the recent update to Facebook for iPhone that you don’t like? Tell us about it.

People hate change… they HATE it, and over the past couple of years, it’s became almost old hat complaining about Facebook changes. They always seem to go one step too far, and consistently poke the hornets nest, which is filled with over 500 million inhabitants.

Facebook for iPhoneVersion 3.4 is now available in the App Store. We’ve fixed a ton of bugs and added new features like map view for Places, the ability to check in to Events and an improved News Feed. Get it here: http://bit.ly/erlfVl 3 days ago · 4,882 likes · 1,064 comments

Facebook posted the status update you see above on their “Facebook for iPhone” app page. As you can see there are 1,000+ comments, and most of those are complaints about the recent changes. Below are a few of the most common complaints that we’re seeing, and a few other observations…

Facebook for iPhone thinks everything was posted “Just Now”.

Take a look at the screenshot above, I’ve paired the desktop view with an iPhone view. The desktop version of Facebook is loading the appropriate timestamp while the app version thinks everything “just now” happened. Is this a huge problem? Of course not, but it would be nice to see the accurate timestamp. Some users have even commented, “Why fix something that was working fine already” can’t say that I disagree with them.

Comments & Likes: pick a side, please.

Susan CoppersmithDid facebook just switch and put the likes on the left and comments on the right …. Don’t mess with me!!! 17 hours ago · Like · 3 comments

It was brought to my attention that some are now seeing likes and comments in a different order. Maybe Facebook is starting to load things differently for your newsfeed versus your profile, check out the screenshot below to see what I’m referring to. Whatever the case maybe, wouldn’t it make more sense to make everything uniform?

It also appears that Facebook has changed the styling of how likes and comments are presented to the user, depending upon how you’re viewing it. If you’re on your newsfeed and you click the “+”, you’ll see an arrow object that now houses the buttons. If you do the same thing while on your profile, you’ll notice that the old styling is still in place. As I said above, why not make this uniform across the board? Check out the comparison screenshot below to see the new way it’s done below. (It looks much better)

The people have spoken, they want their Farmville posts.

While scrolling through the comments some of the comments left, one thing really jumps out… people really miss Farmville posts. There are literally hundreds of people complaining about this. Below is a small sampling of some of the comments being left. I knew people were passionate over Farmville, but why do so many people want their newsfeed clogged with it? Ah, I guess to each his own.

It’s unknown if Facebook will release a secondary update to fix some of the bugs with version 3.4, or just wait until the next update to tackle them all at once. Whatever happens, users will have another round of updates to complain about.

Have you upgraded your Facebook for iPhone to version 3.4? If so, are you having any problems with it? If so, tell us about them.

1. Comments. (Those are items I’ve commented on — 1,893 so far)
2. Likes. (Those are items I’ve liked — 3,003 so far)

A few minutes ago I just passed 3,000 “Likes.”

What is a “Like?” First of all, you can’t like your own stuff. So, if you check out my like page you’ll see everyone ELSE’s stuff that I liked. I read through rivers of noise and anything that rises above that aggregate I click “Like” on. It’s my way to signal to you that something is worth checking out. I guess these things are the “news, not the noise.”

Likes, though, are sort of magic on FriendFeed. Here’s why.

Let’s say you only have one friend on FriendFeed: me.

Well, by my liking other people you’ll see THEIR posts along with mine. FriendFeed shows you those as “Friend of a Friend” items. That means that people’s first experiences on FriendFeed are a lot better than they’d otherwise be. And minimizes my own noisiness because you won’t just see my items, but you’ll see the dozens or hundreds of things I like every day there too.

I can’t wait until I can pull things out of the database that have tons of likes and show you those. That’s where the real value is in FriendFeed but I can’t do that yet. When that happens we’ll have the ability to really build our own pages with stuff that we care about that’s vetted by other people first.

I feel a lot of responsibility to only like good things since I have 13,000+ people following me on FriendFeed already.

One reason why I do a lot more “Likes” than Google Reader Sharing lately (which is pretty close to the same thing). Because I can “Like” an item on my iPhone without waiting for a new page to render. FriendFeed is the first iPhone-compatible-sharing-system I’ve gotten on. It’s amazing how much I read on my iPhone thanks to FriendFeed now. Google Reader on iPhone really sucks comparatively.

Also, FriendFeed is far better because I can “Like” Twitter messages that don’t come into Google Reader. If you’re on Twitter please sign up for FriendFeed and add your feed so I can “Like” your items too.

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