<story><title>Google +1&apos;s Correlation with Higher Search Rankings</title><url>http://moz.com/blog/google-plus-correlations</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Matt_Cutts</author><text>Just trying to decide the politest way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings. Let&amp;#x27;s start with correlation != causation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/552/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;552&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;But it would probably be better to point to this 2011 post (also from SEOMoz&amp;#x2F;Moz) from two years ago in which a similar claim was made about Facebook shares: &lt;a href=&quot;http://moz.com/blog/does-google-use-facebook-shares-to-influence-search-rankings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;moz.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;does-google-use-facebook-shares-to-influ...&lt;/a&gt; . From that blog post from two years ago: &amp;quot;One of the most interesting findings from our 2011 Ranking Factors analysis was the high correlation between Facebook shares and Google US search position.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This all came to a head at the SMX Advanced search conference in 2011 where Rand Fishkin presented his claims. I did a polite debunk of the idea that Google used Facebook shares in our web ranking at the conference, leading to this section in the 2011 blog post: &amp;quot;Rand pointed out that Google does have some access to Facebook data overall and set up a small-scale test to determine if Google would index content that was solely shared on Facebook. To date, that page has not been indexed, despite having quite a few shares (64 according to the OpenGraph).&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you make compelling content, people will link to it, like it, share it on Facebook, +1 it, etc. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that Google is using those signals in our ranking.&lt;p&gt;Rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much better spent making great content.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google +1&apos;s Correlation with Higher Search Rankings</title><url>http://moz.com/blog/google-plus-correlations</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>buro9</author><text>2 things:&lt;p&gt;1) I think most people suspected this, and it&amp;#x27;s not amazing.&lt;p&gt;2) Is this not an abuse of their monopoly position in search? In that, to obtain a better placement or even just retain existing placement, you would have to participate in Google+</text></comment>