Search, as both a business and as a puzzle is getting exciting again. For several years, we have laboured under a monolithic and virtually monopolistic culture ruled by Google and its brilliant but constantly flawed PageRank algorithm. This week’s announcement of the deal between Facebook and Bing to include social recommendations (or “likes”) is likely to force change both at Google and in the way digital marketers market their clients’ digital assets.

By including social recommendations as a signal in its ranking algorithm, Bing is using an innovative way to include the ideas of general web-users in determining how relevant a page, document or web property will be to individual users. Social recommendation both personalizes and localizes search results in a way that gives a search user access to their friend’s opinions as opposed to the opinions of invisible and often unknown webmasters or link builders.

Though the move in and of itself is not likely to have serious impacts on Google’s popularity, over time it will help Bing increase its market share. It will also help Bing and Yahoo! better ad-targeting by giving Bing access to the profile information freely supplied by Facebook users.

For webmasters and search engine marketing specialists, the addition of social recommendation to Bing’s general algorithm provides an easy method of moving a website higher in search results, provided enough people click the soon to be ubiquitous Like button on client pages.

Adding a Facebook Like or Recommend button to a web page or document is extremely easy and fully explained at the .

There are a number of questions search marketers need to answer before fully understanding the implications of social recommendation as a means of ranking web documents. Off the top of my head, I can think of three easy ways to game social recommendations and I’ve not really put much effort into thinking about it. Aside from the obvious, here are a four questions I would like answers to before making any further comment on the SEO value of social recommendations:

• How much power does a “like” recommendation have over a number of relevant incoming links?
• What is the active-lifespan of a “like”?
• How long will it take for Bing to be “like-spammed” and what will they do to verify Facebook user profiles?

Whatever the answers to these (and dozens of other) questions, the deal between Facebook and Bing will unquestionably open a new set of signals in search. The face of our industry is changing and that change is known as Facebook. Things are getting interesting again.

Jim Hedger

Jim Hedger is an organic SEO and digital marketing specialist. Jim has been involved in the online marketing industry since 1998 and a SEO since 1999. Best known as a broadcaster, interviewer, content writer and search industry commentator, Jim is a frequent conference speaker and organizer. He hosts the search focused radio show Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM and is a WebmasterRadio.FM conference interviewer. Jim brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, passion and creative thinking to each project. Preferring a teamwork approach, Jim strives to inform and train his clients and their staff to run and maintain their own search and social media efforts.

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