Google and Bing Confirm Acceptance of No Follow Links
Posted: Friday 03 December, 2010
Pete Goold
The news about Google and Bing's respective admissions that no follow links, such as those from social sites, are now formally considered to be one of the ranking factors that determine's a site's place within Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPs), is far reaching, to say the least.
No follow links, such as those found on most (although, interstingly, not all) social sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg etc, along with the comment section of many blogs, have traditionally served one key purpose: through minimising SEO benefit they have ensured that the sites aren't used as engines for the distribution of links in large volumes.
Evidence has suggested for a while that this is no longer the case - a number of recently undertaken experiments that are on the grapevine have proven the case, through taking a new url in complete isolation and simply linking to it aggressively through social media, which have resulted in successfully increasing the url's placement in search engines. So, the fact it's now official comes as no great surprise in and of itself - but what is surprising is that this endorsement might open the floodgates to more unscrupulous use of those sites, thereby reducing their desirability from a user perspective through the greater volume of spam.
One thought is that several of these major social sites are often now being referred to as 'future search engines' - so it's possible that this is a strategic play on behalf of the existing search giants to safeguard their place with little regard for the content on other sites and the resulting effect on the user. However the flip-side is that of course this announcement may drive user sign up and usage further, albeit by marketers and search marketers rather than the mainstream, at least in the short term.
Either way, there's now now doubt that if used sensibly, along side a PR and/or a Search or SEO campaign, social media now has a key role to play beyond that of the obvious community aspects. Moreover, from an agency perspective, this just reinforces my belief that the PR sector will evolve through the integration of not only social media, which is generally accepted, but also search, which is becoming an ever more important digital marketing discipline.
