In the short video clip, Cutts explains that Google doesn’t consider the potential number of followers website owners have gained/could gain for their content as a relevant criterion for the Google rankings. Similarly, likes and shares are not taken into account for the positioning of search results.
The reason for this is simple: Google considers posts on Facebook, Twitter, etc., to be individual webpages, which, in principle, can be indexed. However, social networking sites generate much more new content every day than traditional websites, and not all of these webpages are relevant. Google ultimately works with limited resources, albeit at a tremendously high level. It can be assumed that the search engine market leader does not attempt to crawl and index social media.
The webmasters at Google have also considered the fact that social media content and connections are often volatile. Users are free to delete posts, change their relationship status, end friendships, unlike a page and unsubscribe from their contacts at any time. Each indexing would therefore only be representative of a moment, carrying little overall weight. Google also does not necessarily have access to all content on Facebook, Twitter, or other platforms.
But that’s not to say that social plugins do not have an effect on the success of your website. In fact, there is an extremely strong correlation between social signals and the Google ranking position of that website, according to a 2016 Searchmetrics study. This study proves the correlation is even higher than with any other factor that has an influence on the ranking. But correlation doesn’t automatically lead to a causal connection.
One explanation for the fact that high-ranking websites often also produce a lot of social signals is as follows: the highest positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs) are usually occupied by well-known brands. These brands tend to have their own social media department, whose primary aim is to maintain a dominant position in social media.
It would be a mistake to interpret a social plugin as a kind of SEO plugin. Instead of focusing on your ranking in the search engine, you should take into account the following effects that creating connections to social media can bring:
- Social plugins can expand the outreach of your content and help to generate a larger reader base.
- Generating new traffic through shares and likes on social media platforms directly increases traffic to your website at the same time.
- Having a strong presence in the most popular social networking sites increases awareness of your company, your brands, goods, and services.
- Every social media plugin acts as a point of contact with potential customers who are part of the touchpoint management and can be used to ensure a positive brand experience.
You should, therefore, perhaps consider social plugins not, in terms of search engine optimization but rather the potential effect on the brand name, reputation, customer service, customer relationships, and reliability.