HubShout | Online Marketing Solutions

Searchmetrics, a search analytics firm, conducted a study of UK and US search data from February and March of this year to see what factors impact Google rankings now. The firm analyzed "10,000 selected top-keywords, 300,000 websites and millions of links, shares and tweets."

What did they find out?
From Searchmetrics: "... social signals from Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are frequently associated with good rankings in Google’s index. This is interesting in particular for the UK, which hasn’t had such a strong correlation with social signals up to this point."

Of the top 6 signals, 5 were social; the other, of course -- backlinks.

The Searchmetrics blog about study.

Hmmmm. That is very interesting to say the least

Renee, thats very interesting! I have a new lead that is about to sign up from the UK! Thanks for this I 'll be sure to pass on this link! Thanks again!

Right... but correlation does not equal causation... Did you know that street lights are correlated with crime? I guess that means that street lights cause crime.. LOL ;-)

It’s possible that sites with lots of action on social media are working harder at their marketing.

I know whenever I see a streetlight I want to do something criminal... or run with scissors... I can never decide...

Criminals are like moths. They are drawn to lights. So that explains that. But in terms of social signals. I am thinking that Google considers social signals more authentic/reliable and therefore is placing greater weight on them. I have not read that. I am just throwing it out there.

They have pills for that now-adays... ;-)

Alright, all you social media doubters. I didn't say social media was the answer, it's just a very important part of the puzzle. I do think Lisa is right in that those with social media campaigns are generally more engaged with marketing. And Adam is right too. Correlation does not equal causation. But the takeaway from this is that social signals are a piece of a well-rounded diversified strategy.