Here’s the full list in Google’s words 40 changes for February.

• More coverage for related searches. [launch codename “Fuzhou”] This launch brings in a new data source to help generate the “Searches related to” section, increasing coverage significantly so the feature will appear for more queries. This section contains search queries that can help you refine what you’re searching for.
• Tweak to categorizer for expanded sitelinks. [launch codename “Snippy”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] This improvement adjusts a signal we use to try and identify duplicate snippets. We were applying a categorizer that wasn’t performing well for our expanded sitelinks, so we’ve stopped applying the categorizer in those cases. The result is more relevant sitelinks.
• Less duplication in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename “thanksgiving”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] We’ve adjusted signals to reduce duplication in the snippets forexpanded sitelinks. Now we generate relevant snippets based more on the page content and less on the query.
• More consistent thumbnail sizes on results page. We’ve adjusted the thumbnail size for most image content appearing on the results page, providing a more consistent experience across result types, and also across mobile and tablet. The new sizes apply to rich snippet results for recipes and applications, movie posters, shopping results, book results, news results and more.
• More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. [project codename “Suggest”] We’ve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India].
• More accurate detection of official pages. [launch codename “WRE”] We’ve made an adjustment to how we detect official pages to make more accurate identifications. The result is that many pages that were previously misidentified as official will no longer be.
• Refreshed per-URL country information. [Launch codename “longdew”, project codename “country-id data refresh”] We updated the country associations for URLs to use more recent data.
• Expand the size of our images index in Universal Search. [launch codename “terra”, project codename “Images Universal”] We launched a change to expand the corpus of results for which we show images in Universal Search. This is especially helpful to give more relevant images on a larger set of searches.
• Minor tuning of autocomplete policy algorithms. [project codename “Suggest”] We have a narrow set of policies for autocomplete for offensive and inappropriate terms. This improvement continues to refine the algorithms we use to implement these policies.
• “Site:” query update [launch codename “Semicolon”, project codename “Dice”] This change improves the ranking for queries using the “site:” operator by increasing the diversity of results.
• Improved detection for SafeSearch in Image Search. [launch codename "Michandro", project codename “SafeSearch”] This change improves our signals for detecting adult content in Image Search, aligning the signals more closely with the signals we use for our other search results.
• Interval based history tracking for indexing. [project codename “Intervals”] This improvement changes the signals we use in document tracking algorithms.
• Improvements to foreign language synonyms. [launch codename “floating context synonyms”, project codename “Synonyms”] This change applies an improvement we previously launched for English to all other languages. The net impact is that you’ll more often find relevant pages that include synonyms for your query terms.
• Disabling two old fresh query classifiers. [launch codename “Mango”, project codename “Freshness”] As search evolves and new signals and classifiers are applied to rank search results, sometimes old algorithms get outdated. This improvement disables two old classifiers related to query freshness.
• More organized search results for Google Korea. [launch codename “smoothieking”, project codename “Sokoban4”] This significant improvement to search in Korea better organizes the search results into sections for news, blogs and homepages.
• Fresher images. [launch codename “tumeric”] We’ve adjusted our signals for surfacing fresh images. Now we can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web.
• Update to the Google bar. [project codename “Kennedy”] We continue to iterate in our efforts to deliver a beautifully simple experience across Google products, and as part of that this month we made further adjustments to the Google bar. The biggest change is that we’ve replaced the drop-down Google menu in the November redesign with a consistent and expanded set of links running across the top of the page.
• Adding three new languages to classifier related to error pages. [launch codename "PNI", project codename "Soft404"] We have signals designed to detect crypto 404 pages (also known as “soft 404s”), pages that return valid text to a browser but the text only contain error messages, such as “Page not found.” It’s rare that a user will be looking for such a page, so it’s important we be able to detect them. This change extends a particular classifier to Portuguese, Dutch and Italian.
• Improvements to travel-related searches. [launch codename “nesehorn”] We’ve made improvements to triggering for a variety of flight-related search queries. These changes improve the user experience for our Flight Search feature with users getting more accurate flight results.
• Data refresh for related searches signal. [launch codename “Chicago”, project codename “Related Search”] One of the many signals we look at to generate the “Searches related to” section is the queries users type in succession. If users very often search for [apple] right after [banana], that’s a sign the two might be related. This update refreshes the model we use to generate these refinements, leading to more relevant queries to try.
• International launch of shopping rich snippets. [project codename “rich snippets”]Shopping rich snippets help you more quickly identify which sites are likely to have the most relevant product for your needs, highlighting product prices, availability, ratings and review counts. This month we expanded shopping rich snippets globally (they were previously only available in the US, Japan and Germany).
• Improvements to Korean spelling. This launch improves spelling corrections when the user performs a Korean query in the wrong keyboard mode (also known as an “IME”, or input method editor). Specifically, this change helps users who mistakenly enter Hangul queries in Latin mode or vice-versa.
• Improvements to freshness. [launch codename “iotfreshweb”, project codename “Freshness”] We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.
• Web History in 20 new countries. With Web History, you can browse and search over your search history and webpages you’ve visited. You will also get personalized search results that are more relevant to you, based on what you’ve searched for and which sites you’ve visited in the past. In order to deliver more relevant and personalized search results, we’ve launched Web History in Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Morocco, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Kuwait, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Nigeria, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Bosnia and Herzegowina, Azerbaijan, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Moldova, and Ghana. Web History is turned on only for people who have a Google Account and previously enabled Web History.
• Improved snippets for video channels. Some search results are links to channels with many different videos, whether on mtv.com, Hulu or YouTube. We’ve had a feature for a while now that displays snippets for these results including direct links to the videos in the channel, and this improvement increases quality and expands coverage of these rich “decorated” snippets. We’ve also made some improvements to our backends used to generate the snippets.
• Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
• Improvements to English spell correction. [launch codename “Kamehameha”] This change improves spelling correction quality in English, especially for rare queries, by making one of our scoring functions more accurate.
• Improvements to coverage of News Universal. [launch codename “final destination”] We’ve fixed a bug that caused News Universal results not to appear in cases when our testing indicates they’d be very useful.
• Consolidation of signals for spiking topics. [launch codename “news deserving score”, project codename “Freshness”] We use a number of signals to detect when a new topic is spiking in popularity. This change consolidates some of the signals so we can rely on signals we can compute in realtime, rather than signals that need to be processed offline. This eliminates redundancy in our systems and helps to ensure we can continue to detect spiking topics as quickly as possible.
• Better triggering for Turkish weather search feature. [launch codename “hava”] We’ve tuned the signals we use to decide when to present Turkish users with the weather search feature. The result is that we’re able to provide our users with the weather forecast right on the results page with more frequency and accuracy.
• Visual refresh to account settings page. We completed a visual refresh of the account settings page, making the page more consistent with the rest of our constantly evolving design.
• Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.
• Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
• SafeSearch update. We have updated how we deal with adult content, making it more accurate and robust. Now, irrelevant adult content is less likely to show up for many queries.
• Spam update. In the process of investigating some potential spam, we found and fixed some weaknesses in our spam protections.
• Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

Social and authorship are two big elements in ranking success these days, and Google+ plays to both of these. The +1 button, which we know influences rankings, is obviously a big part of the Google+ feature set. This is a signal that helps Google determine how good people think a piece of content or a website is, and now, perhaps even a business in general (it’s not a perfect signal, but it’s a signal).

Now, with the launch of Google+ Pages, businesses get to tie the +1′s on their Pages to the +1′s on their site (though this doesn’t seem to be working fully just yet), which should send a stronger signal of brand reputation to Google search. If only you could tie your Facebook page likes to it too, that would probably be a much better indicator, but Google does what it can. This is in effect why Google has to have its own social ecosystem – so it can have access to this kind of data. It needs that kind of data to remain relevant and deliver relevant results in an increasingly social world. That’s not to say Google can’t see when people like your page on Facebook. That is public data. I’m guessing Google’s not ignoring that.

On that search note, Google is also giving searchers easy ways to add brands to their circles. You can add from the search result itself, when a Page is returned, or with the “Direct Connect” feature, you can enter a “+” with the Page you’re looking for, as your query:

Businesses can also link their Pages to their AdWords accounts. +1′s there count too.

“The new +1 aggregation may also affect the auction on the display network,” says Pamela Parker, an editor at Search Engine Land. “Google has said it would use +1 data to better target ads on its display network, serving advertisers’ ads more often to friends of those who +1ed the ad or the landing page URL. Presumably, this new way of aggregating +1s for the brand as a whole will make this affect all the more powerful.”

Set up a Page. Local Pages have a little more. 

To set up your page, simply sign into your Google+ profile, click “create a Google+ page” on the side of your stream, pick the category of page you want to create, and click “create”. Categories include: Product/brand, Company/institution/organization, local business/place, arts/entertainment/sports, or other.

“Don’t stress out about choosing the perfect category,” Google says. “Use the ‘Other’ category if none of the others seem to be a good fit. The core functionality and discoverability of a page isn’t affected by its category. Right now, only pages that use the Local business or Place category have different features. Local pages are designed to help people locate the business using its physical address.”

Local pages include a map of the business’s location, and include address, phone number/address, and hours of operation.

Will you use  Google+ Business pages for your buisness?

What’s Hot is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a place where you can see interesting trends on Google+. The following video explains it anyway:

Ripples is a tool designed to help you visualize the way your posts flow throughout Google+. You can simply view a public post and select “view Ripples”. The video below illustrates who this works:

The Creative Kit a set of photo editing tools for Google+:

There are even some special Halloween effects available for a limited time. “Through the end of October, simply add some spook to your photos, and share them publicly on Google+ with the hashtag #gplushalloween,” says Google SVP of Engineering Vic Gundotra. “We’ll assemble a surprise panel of celebrities, and next Thursday, Nov 3, they’ll announce their favorites. In the meantime, you can see early submissions from community members below. After all: we take our fun very seriously.”

Finally, Google+ integration is available for Google Apps customers. “Starting now you can manually turn on Google+ for your organization,” says product manager Ronald Ho. “Once Google+ is turned on, your users will just need to sign up at google.com/+ to get started. For customers who use Google Apps for Business or the free version of Google Apps and who have chosen to automatically enable new services, Google+ will automatically become available to all of your users over the next several days.”

Users can share publicly, with Circles, or within the entire organization.

Google says it is building a migration tool for those who are already using Google+, but want to switch from a personal account to a professional one.

The features aren’t completely rolled out yet.

Google has plenty of obstacles to overcome if this is going to be a huge success. Here are some of them.

1. Most people don’t want to leave Facebook. 

Sure there are plenty of people out there looking for a good alternative to Facebook. Some of them have found it with Twitter. Some want something better. That said, it is highly doubtful that the majority of Facebook users are looking for something else. They like Facebook just fine, and aren’t looking for a reason to leave.

Sure, it’s possible to use both, but as long as people still have the majority of their friends on Facebook, and not so many on Google+ this is going to be a hard nut to crack. Not an impossible nut, but a hard one.

2. People are already gravitating more toward Twitter. 

Speaking of Twitter, it is growing pretty well. It’s also about to be integrated into the hugely popular iOS. Many of the users will also be using Facebook. Google+ is simply another thing to add to the list, and could be deemed an added burden.

3. Google’s previous attempts at social

Google doesn’t have the best track record or reputation when it comes to social. Some of this is simply perception, because YouTube is social and it’s obviously a huge success, but it was acquired by Google – not created by Google, and one could argue that it’s not the social aspect of YouTube that is its main driving force, but the simple fact that it has tons and tons of stuff to watch.

4. Google’s reputation for privacy

When Google launched Google Buzz, it was a huge privacy fiasco, and one that is still in the news. Google greatly damaged its reputation in the area of privacy with this. It’s not hard to find commentary throughout the web indicating growing distrust of the company in general, whether justified or not. Reputation can go a long way.

5. People largely still think about Google as search

One of Google’s biggest challenges is its existing success. Google has become synonymous with search. Google is a verb, that means to search for something on Google. People don’t think to go to Google to share things necessarily. They think to go to Google to search.

Yes, Google has many products that do many different things outside of the realm of search, but first and foremost to most people, Google is still search, and Facebook is friends. That’s another hard nut to crack.

6. The Like Button

Speaking of Facebook being friends, that “like” button that is everywhere on the Internet, has been quite powerful, and is the premier way that people share content now, I believe. Google has the +1 Button. Not so much. At this point (disregarding the Buzz button for a moment, which doesn’t have much to do with Google+ at the moment), publishers are asking people to either “like” this and share with your friends, or “+1″ this so that other people that you may or may not know may be able to find it in search results for some query that may or may not be searched for. Which one is going to get clicked more?

7. The Retweet button

See numbers 2 and 6.

8. Bing

Back to number 5 for a moment. Google is synonymous with search, but it is still the key ingredient to keeping people using Google+. Meanwhile, Bing is just going to continue to gain market share. The more people using Bing as their default search engine, means the less people using Google, which will likely mean less using Google+.

Realistically, Bing currently doesn’t come close to Google in market share at this point. Whether it ever will remains to be seen, but so far it’s been growing fairly steadily, and now Google faces FTC scrutiny over its competitive practices. When Microsoft was in a similar situation, it greatly set the company back in innovation for years, many people say. Depending on the outcome of that, it’s hard to say what Google’s future will hold.

9. Yahoo

Yahoo still makes up another significant segment of search market share, and maybe even more importantly, It still has a very strong presence in other key areas like email,finance, news, etc.

Part of the Google+ strategy is that it extends across Google products. Some of these products compete directly with some of Yahoo’s strong points. Let’s not forget that Yahoo is also in the connected TV space, where Google is still trying to gain more significant market share.

10. Complexity

The sheer complexity of Google+ may also work against it, particularly when you pair it with number one. You’re trying to get people to use your service instead of Facebook’s, while trying to sell an overly-complicated concept (mainly with Circles. Read this explanation of the feature.).

In the end, it might not really be as complex as it seems, but again, perception goes a long way. If it even seems complicated at a glance, and all of your friends are already doing just fine on Facebook, how big is the incentive?

To be clear, I’m not saying any of these things mean that Google+ won’t succeed. It’s entirely possible that it could become a huge hit. It wouldn’t even have to dethrone Facebook to be a big hit. I think we can consider Twitter a hit, and it doesn’t even come close to Facebook in terms of users.

Suffice it to say, Google has its work cut out for it.

You can view the entire presentation here, but I’ve pulled out a few key slides that basically sum up the findings.

The factors are actually broken down into the following subsets, where each is ranked against other related factors: overall algorithmic factors, page-specific link signals, domain-wide link signals, on-page signals, domain name match signals, social signals, and highest positively + negatively correlated metrics overall.

The results find that page-level link metrics are the top algorithmic factors (22%), followed by domain-level, link authority features (21%). This is similar to the same SEOmoz poll for 2009, but there is a huge difference in the numbers, indicating that experts are less certain that page-level link metrics are as important. In 2009, they accounted for 43%.

According to Fishkin, the main takeaways here are that SEOs believe the power of links has declined, that diversity of links is greater than raw quantity, and that the exact match anchor text appears slightly less well-correlated than partial anchor text in external links.

Domain-wide link signals are cited as metrics based on links that point to anywhere on the ranking domain.

Here is what the poll looked like in this department:

The report compares followed vs. nofollowed links to the domain and page, finding that nofollow links may indeed help with rankings:

Facebook can provide a level of engagement between businesses and consumers that you simply didn’t see much before it was around. Naturally, as a result, Facebook has proven to be an indispensable marketing tool and driver of website traffic. Granted, the content has to be compelling, but you already know that.

Getting Traffic from Facebook

Danny Sullivan posted a slew of Facebook Like button/social plugin stats that came directly from Facebook itself. Here are a few of the stands-outs:

- The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic.

- Users coming to the NHL.com from Facebook spend 85% more time, read 90% more articles and watch 85% more videos than a non-connected user.

- ABCNews.com, Washington Post and The Huffington Post are said to have more than doubled their referral traffic from Facebook since adding social plugins.

- Levi’s saw a 40 times increase in referral traffic from Facebook after implementing the Like button in April 2010 and has maintained those levels since.

- Outdoor sporting goods retailer Giantnerd.com saw a 100% increase revenue from Facebook within two weeks of adding the Like button.

- American Eagle added the Like button next to every product on their site and found Facebook referred visitors spent an average of 57% more money than non-Facebook referred visitors

According to what Facebook told Sullivan, Like buttons get 3 – 5 times more clicks if versions that show thumbnails of friends are used, they allow people to add comments, they appear at both the top and the bottom of content, and they appear near visual content like videos or graphics. He looks at a specific example with Metacafe, which originally had a Like button at the bottom of its videos, but after adding one to the top in addition to it, tripled its number of daily likes and doubled its amount of referral traffic from Facebook.

That’s a pretty huge impact from such a simple adjustment.

Sullivan also references the recent Buddy Media report we covered last month, looking at Facebook’s EdgeRank (the basis for the algorithm Facebook uses to determine what shows up in users’ News Feeds), and how to optimize your Facebook activity to get seen in the News Feed more often, which is obviously going to help with traffic. Buddy Media, which in case you’re not familiar with, is a company that’s built a business out of creating Facebook tools for businesses, and counts major brands like Target, Johnson & Johnson, and ABC among its clients.

In the report, they suggested brands do the following on their Facebook Pages to get in the News Feed more and boost their “EdgeRank”:

1. Ask questions
2. Post games and trivia
3. Interact with fan engagement
4. Incorporate wall sapplets (polls, coupons, etc.)
5. Incorporate relevant photos
6. Relate to current events
7. Incorporate videos
8. Post content for time-sensitive campaigns
9. Include links within posts
10. Be explicit in your posts

In terms of getting Facebook referrals, don’t forget about Facebook’s recently launched ”send” button, which can drive really targeted traffic.

Facebook and Search

Clearly Facebook itself can be very powerful for driving traffic directly to your content, but it also has the potential to be pretty powerful indirectly through search. It looks like this will only increase as integration gets more mature.

Of course Bing has ramped up its integration of Facebook. It’s displaying Likes in search results, where applicable. It’s showing actual sites your friends have “liked” (not just individual pieces of content). “Likes” are influencing search rankings in Bing on a personalized basis (and this is a powerful way to crack into the personalized SERP, which is no easy SEO task). Bing is using Facebook data to show “well-liked content” from sites across the web. It’s showing Facebook posts from brands when the brand is searched for. It’s letting users have conversations about some results with Facebook friends (mainly in travel for the time being). Bing has a feature that lets users share shopping lists with friends.

Bing uses Facebook in other ways, and will continue to add even more. Bing Director Stefan Weitz said in an interview with Inside Facebook, “It’s more than just Likes now. We think of people as having characteristics and attributes, not just actions. Now we’re considering what other meta data can we use that people will give us access to so we can continue to personalize search.”

He says 80% of people delay making a purchase online until they can talk to a friend. I’m not entirely sure where he’s getting this information, but 80% is pretty high, and Facebook is the online destination where many, many people have the easiest access of the largest group of their true friends (and family).

MG Siegler points to a note left on the Google Groups message board, saying, “Google Groups-specific profiles will no longer be supported. Instead, you will be able to use the new Google Groups to (optionally) link your new and improved Google profile with your groups. Starting July 1st 2011, you will not be able to make changes to your Groups profile. Your profile information will be available for export from your profile page until November 1st 2011. This change will not affect the nicknames you might have chosen for yourself to participate in groups. It will only affect the custom profile fields, such as your photo, location, and occupation.

One more example of things being more tied together.

Improving Search?

That’s a very significant factor of all of this as well. We have to wonder if this won’t backfire in some Google Buzz-like privacy backlash, but it will certainly ensure that content there will be discoverable – by users, and perhaps more importantly to Google – by its search index.

You know how Google won’t do much in the way of connecting with your Facebook account? That hurts it in search (one area where Bing has an edge and Facebook itself could become a dangerous threat). Remember when Google CEO Eric Schmidt said they’d find other ways to get that data? This may have been at least part of what he was referring to. Of course that involves people using the profiles, but we’ll see how that goes.

Google’s Profile Message continues:

Keep in mind that your full name is the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you’ll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don’t want to share.

If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.

The Components of a Good Social Network

So let’s look at some of the components that when brought together would give Google more of a social network-like experience:

1. Google Buzz – The Newsfeed
2. Google Profiles – The Wall
3. Picasa Web Albums – Photos
4. YouTube - Videos
5. Google Music (pending) – Music
6. Android/The Android Maket – The platform and means to obtain apps usage (including games)
7. Chrome/Chrome OS/Chrome Extensions Gallery/Chrome Web Store – Same as Above
8. Google Latitude – Location-based service/Check-Ins
9. Blogger - Blogs (More open version of Facebook Notes)
10. Gmail - Email, Chat, Video Chat
11. Google Calendar – Event organization
12. Search – important to any social network
13. Google Docs and Google Wave (tech still could appear in other services) – Group collaboration
14. Google Apps - Getting it used internally at businesses and schools
15. Aardvark – Q&A
16. Google Reader - Easily Follow news sources and share links
17. Knol – Wiki-like content to provide information pages about subjects (note: not wiki-exactly, but certainly a competitor to the information pages on Facebook)

The list goes on…

All of this can be expanded upon and promoted in Google’s most powerful product – search. Google also continues to rapidly acquire new companies, which will no doubt fuel the strategy even more.

The bringing together of all of these assets in a thoughtful and useful way will be critical, which is probably why it’s taking so long. Google’s not rushing this, because it could have a huge impact on the company’s whole future going forward. Much of it is about staying on the cutting edge of web technology – the biggest area where Google has to compete with Facebook. Facebook is taking away a great deal of engineering talent that might have once gone to Google instead (or in many cases actually came fromGoogle) – much how Google was doing to Microsoft a decade ago.

Google has been criticized for its social efforts a lot over the years. With Larry Page taking the helm again, and reportedly looking to get back to the more startup-like atmosphere that Google had in its early days, there is another fascinating element of which we just don’t know the pending impact.

We now face the stark reality that a method revered by many, will be reduced to a mere supplemental method of obtaining links. We knew the day was coming. And to be honest, it took longer than I expected. There had been numerous times in the past where I experienced the game of cat-and-mouse, sifting through multiple search results only to find countless versions of the same regurgitated garbage.

A change was needed to clean up the landscape and Google responded with the Farmer/Panda update.

Even though Google released an official statement on their blog claiming their intent was to find more high-quality sites in search (released only in the United States at this time). It became obvious the Farmer/Panda update was a laser sharp effort to disparage content farms, and claim back the territory they once owned. Good or bad, article directories were a main target of this algorithmic change. And even though collateral damage is inevitable in a change of this magnitude, at the end of the day the Internet will become a better place because of it.

It’s still too early to determine the fallout of this seismic algorithmic change, but one thing is clear.

Quality metrics for content and site will be taken to a new level.

Adjustments will be needed to salvage campaigns that relied solely on spinning and mass submission to hundreds, even thousands of article directories.

So where will article marketing fit into the new SEO landscape?

It will likely remain a viable method, but will now contain barriers to entry. Brands will be given priority, and you will need to knock them off their perch by showing superior content and site structure.

Here are some things you will want to consider:

Quality content will become even more important in the days ahead, especially if you are looking for long-term results. When you choose a niche, be determined to become an authority on it. MFA (Made for Adsense) sites will become a thing of the past.

Article directory links will most likely drop in value, at least for the short-term. Therefore you should consider publishing content on your site, using article directories sparingly. When you do use article directories, consider submitting only to the top few, thereby decreasing your chance of becoming an unwarranted target.

Your objective should be to make your site the primary “owner” of the content, establishing a more natural linking progression in the process. I believe this algorithm change is a precursor of what is more to come, as Google continues to ramp up efforts on low quality/thin sites.

It’s become more and more clear over time that having a strong social presence is helpful in building a strong search presence for a variety of reasons, but it’s not been so clear, just how the search engines have looked at things like Twitter and Facebook profiles when it comes to organic search ranking.

Search Engine Land Chief Danny Sullivan posted an important article about this very topic, with some rare and surprisingly direct answers from both Google and Bing. While, neither exactly gave away their respective secret sauces, it would appear that they have set some things straight.

Google

Google reportedly uses when an article is retweeted or referenced in Twitter as a signal in organic and news rankings (even though links on Twitter are nofollowed). They also use it to enhance the news universal results (based on how many people share an article).

Google “computes and uses author quality” for when someone tweets. When Sullivan asked if they calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on who tweets it, Google Responded, “Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the ‘Top links’ section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.”

Google says it treats links shared on Facebook Fan pages the same way as tweeted links, but they have no personal Facebook wall data. Authority for Facebook Pages is also treated like Twitter.

So, the more authoritative the crowd sharing links to your content, the better. Not that different than PageRank.

Bing

When it comes to Twitter, Bing tells Sullivan it also looks at social authority of users and more specifically, looks at how many people they follow and how many follow them, adding that this can add “a little weight” to a listing in regular search results (though it carries more in Bing’sseparate Social Search). Bing decides when links should carry more weight based on the person who tweets it.

As far as Facebook, Bing currently looks at links shared on Facebook that are marked as being shared to “everyone” and those from Fan Pages. “We can tell if something is of quality on Facbook by leveraging Twitter,” as Sullivan paraphrases Bing’s response. “If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate.”

Bing does not use its new Facebook data in ordinary web search…yet.

On a related note, Bing is finding other interesting ways to utilize Facebook with search.

So, clearly it pays to tweet and build a credible Twitter presence. This means gaining a significant following in number, but also getting authoritative users to follow you (and hopefully retweet your links). This would appear to be good for plain old fashioned organic rankings as well as other supplemental search results. More importantly, it pays to create good content that will attract authoritative Twitterers to share it with others.

These things of course pay anyway, but it’s nice to know that they actually do have an effect on search rankings as well.

It’s not surprising that Twitter is currently playing a more important role in to search engine ranking than Facebook, simply because Twitter is public by default. Facebook is much more walled, meaning that most of the good Facebook data is private. Though it will be interesting to see what happens when Bing does integrate its newly acquired Facebook into its regular search offerings.

This wall of Facebook’s is also a factor into why Facebook could potentially unleash its own legitimate search engine. It’s got a search feature now of course, but there is a great deal of potential for them to do a whole lot more and really get under Google’s skin. More on that here.

Sullivan provides more background and context around the search engines’ social signals, as well as the full with both Bing and Google, and details about the Twitter Firehose’s lack of nofollow.

With the information Sullivan has gotten out of Google and Bing, will you focus more on social media?