Amazing Correlation Between Google +1s and Higher Search Rankings

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Dave Elliott: did this not get posted up yesterday?
• 
  Jim Munro: You are right, Dave but Matt Cutts made this post eight hours later.
  
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6243451
• 
  Dave Elliott: "johnward, I know of at least one other SEO that has been doing a more rigorous study of whether more +1s lead to a higher ranking. I suspect that study might come out in the next month or two.
  Suffice it to say that I would be very skeptical of anyone who claimed that more +1s led to a higher search ranking in Google's web results."
  
  Be interesting to see this study in a month or two, but I absolutely believe more social shares = better rankings. Weather or not that is directly or indirectly (more people viewing site, more people linking to content after seeing it on twitter, or whatever) I don't really care. More shares +1's and blah = better rankings.
  
  Now, where can i buy 250 +1's for $5 :D
• 
  Masatake Wasa: +Micah Fisher-Kirshner's post at ;https://plus.google.com/107262977899816786540/posts/dtvrhHVqisv is really worth a read on this matter.
  
  I think there is an indirect benefit, because of increased overall traffic, thus an increased likelihood of links, but I don't and cannot see +1s making a difference in organic search. On the personalized search, though, I wouldn't be surprised if Google were to start weighing +1s more, as more and more people are on Google+ and have +1d more and more things, making it less susceptible to outlying +1s skewing the results. But then, what do I know.
• 
  Tom Roberts: To paraphrase +Mark Traphagen ;on this:
  
  It's not so much the +1 that is giving the benefit, but the sharing of the link on Google+ (which usually happens when people plus one).  ;Each share creates a dofollow link back to the post - and we know that Google+ is crawled and indexed regularly by Google.  ;Some shares will even be worth more than others - the Google authorship page has a PR3 ranking, proving that PageRank passes on Google+ https://plus.google.com/communities/104474428845467390263.  ;A share on that page creates a dofollow link to the URL that could potentially be very strong.
  
  Matt Cutts didn't go out of his way to refute this claim, which doesn't necessarily prove that it's true, but I would be inclined to think that the links that come from Google+ shares etc. are followed and do pass PageRank. Question is - how long for? Will Google use this to encourage people to use the network more, or will they smite the SEOs and put up blanket nofollow links.
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  Masatake Wasa: +Tim Capper ;would know this better than I do, but the crucial question is: which outgoing links from the Google+ landscape are follow links. That a post, a page, a profile, or a community in Google+ can accumulate PR by receiving incoming links is not in doubt. Indeed, it is arguably in Google's interests that Google+ entities rank highly with the criteria that apply to all sites. The question is what benefits are there for sites and web entities outside the Google+ landscape that have been shared, reshared, or ;+1d.
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  Tom Roberts: I think nearly all of them are follow links. If a post is shared on a page, that's followed. Shared in a comment in a post are nofollowed, but then if linked to in an about section - followed.
  
  Green = followed:
  
  http://i.imgur.com/McGDfCB.png
  http://i.imgur.com/tmWjsuZ.png
• 
  Jim Munro: I was only posting because of Matt Cutts attempt to hose down Cyrus' article, Masatake, I was not questioning Micah's analysis or any of the other articles written to respond. They are all way above my head.
  
  I have a simple questions though that I'd like to ask about tomorrow night.
  
  Do all benefits which might be attributed due to G+ activity have to be tied to the link graph in some way? (This is Google's platform, why would they crawl it to evaluate it?)
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  Masatake Wasa: +Jim Munro, simple questions are the hardest to answer! Must all benefits which might be ;attributed due to G+ activity have to be tied to the link graph in some way? My pure guess: no for personalized search, yes for organic search on the basis that Google+ should be on the same playing field as any other site (in other words: Google+ counts like any other entity on the web, but there is no special treatment for Google+ in organic search, just because it's Google).
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  Jim Munro: ...but Masatake, Google has no qualms giving SERP priority to a host of Google products, why would they exclude G+?
• 
  Masatake Wasa: Google's sense of fair play? Well, perhaps not exactly, but I'd have thought Google would want to avoid closer scrutiny from the likes of the FTC and the EC DG Comp.
• 
  Richard Hearne: "Google's sense of fair play?"
  
  Best joke I've heard in a bit.  ;Thanks +Masatake Wasa ;:)
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: +Jim Munro: My thinking is that they're using +1's to determine quality authors, but not for links. It may help indirectly as they might help quality authors' blog posts rank higher, but not something directly related to the post itself.
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  Jim Munro: I have no idea myself, Micah, so I am happy to follow your idea but isn't every + 1 of each public post reshared publicly but selectively on G+? Would that count as a social share?
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: The link aspect via the share is another story; I'm only referring to the +1 itself. :)