Clarity on the role of Facebook, twitter, Pinterest etc. for ranking purposes.

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

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  Kumar Neeraj Kayastha: Once we have discussed that social media has value in SEO but there was no clarity on the role of Facebook, twitter, Pinterest etc. for ranking purpose.
  This time again I am asking what is the importance of Social Shares and hope you experts have some solid proofs now. Today first time I saw Facebook in Google Webmaster report links to your site, (screenshot below) Pinterest was there already for some time. It means now Google is accepting the value of competitor as SEO factor. Is there any such announcement from Google? Please enlighten!
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  Tim Capper: Well I dont have "proof" as you say but looking at shares on FB etc having a ranking affect is a very narrow view.
  
  So assuming a post on FB or others get shared and people read and enjoy, they share it and so on.
  
  Some may share the post and some may share the page. ;
  
  So the uniqueness and content on that page is enough to have it shared, mentioned and potentially linked to .... thats what makes it worthy for Google to rank the content and attributed pages.
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  Edwin Jonk: In GWT the "links to your site" include nofollow links. If you comment on a WP blog (links in the comments on a WP site are nofollow by default I think and I hope) it will appear in GWT but that doesn't mean they have search value. ;
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  Kumar Neeraj Kayastha: Today I also see the LinkedIn in the same report. It do confirm that WMT is giving some sort of importance. But thanks for responding...
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  bharat thakare: Websites that have higher social media signals rank high not because these signals are considered by Google. This is because those websites create content that's high quality and hence they get shared & rank high as well. ;
  
  If you think logically, Google crawlers do not have full access to Facebook & Twitter. They are able to access only that content which is available without logging in. So, it would be disastrous for them to rank a website based on partial access. ;
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  Kumar Neeraj Kayastha: So it means the sites linking to my site are not so much valuable for SEO purposes; concluded so. +bharat thakare​ +Edwin Jonk​​​ facebook page backlinks (28 in this case) have no such importance.
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  Tim Capper: Yes.
  
  But social links give you an indication of what type of content users like.