Google’s Matt Cutts: We Do Use Twitter and Facebook Links in Ranking
By Anna Johnson on January 15th, 2011Just before Christmas, Google’s search engine spokesman Matt Cutts confirmed that Google uses Twitter and Facebook links in ranking Google search results.
In a video uploaded to the Google Webmaster Help Channel, Matt Cutts said the company was still “trying to figure out a little bit about the reputation of an author or creator on Twitter or Facebook.”
Furthermore, Cutts said:
“I filmed a video back in May 2010 where I said that we didn’t use that as a signal, and at the time, we did not use that as a signal, but now, we’re taping this in December 2010, and we are using that as a signal.”
How much of an influence are links that are shared in Twitter and Facebook?
According to Cutts, a link shared on Twitter and Facebook might have greater influence in real-time search results, but the search company is still “studying how much sense it makes to use it a little more widely within our web search rankings.”
Also, Cutts makes the point that unless the link goes to a webpage that Google’s search engine can crawl, Google won’t be able to attribute a PageRank to the page nor count in its search engine results:
“…if we can’t crawl a page (if we can’t see a page), then we can’t really assign PageRank to it, and it doesn’t really count. So if we’re able to obtain the data, then we can use it, but if for some reason a page is forbidden for us to crawl or if we’re not able to obtain it somehow, then we wouldn’t be able to use it within our rankings.”
Here is the full video of Matt Cutts discussing the influence of Twitter and Facebook links on Google’s search engine rankings:
Source: Matt Cutts, “What are some search trends on your radar?” Google Webmaster Help, December 18, 2010
