Is Google taking signals from social networking sites?

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

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  Justin Y: I think there`s a strong and positive correlation between social signals and higher rankings, but Im not positive if Google can fully determine what`s being naturally shared vs fake. Either way I personally wouldn`t buy into anything fake because I like to think if your not penalized for it now you will be later. 
  Also, I have seen people mention that more plus ones to a given URL can generate higher rankings in SERPs. 
  Those are my thoughts.
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  Nikhil Gabda: But as always there are still techniques like social bookmarkings, directory submission, article submission have been giving results even after the launch of panda, penguin and EMD updates.BTW thanks for replying +Justin Y 
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  Shailaja Ramani: Yes both Google and Bing count the social signals and can help in the search rankings. I don’t think tools can create fake Facebook shares and twitter retweets (I haven’t used any such tools) coz to share something at least they should have some fake accounts, however about the likes Facebook itself gives more imp to engagement on the page than likes. I don’t have any exact ans about does G algo can tackle with fake things or not but it can track the links shared and twitted links; also it can calculate the authority of the profiles in needed. Here I would also like to add Twitter data plays a role in web search, these days. Who you are is being understood. Are you a trusted authority or not?
  Things related to "social authority" - Source: Danny Sullivan
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  Tim Capper: In its RAW form I don`t think a + 1 or FB like plays any part in rankings.
  
  However, lets understand what a + 1 or FB like is. A person will visit a page they will read the page, spending some time on that page then + 1 it ot Like it.
  
  So it is the people visiting, the natural traffic and popularity of the content that Gets Google thinking.
  
  If you purchased + 1s or Likes no matter what spaced out natural BS they say they will deliver them in - they will not spend time on page - so quite easy to spot fakery.
  
  Also if a real person is + 1ing a page, a good percentage will also share this.
  
  Shares on the other hand do play a tiny tiny part - but again I stress - if this is attracting + 1`s, likes and shares - then it is good content and will more then likely be on a good site that ranks well to begin with.
  
  
  I can almost certainly guarantee that (unless by some miracle) a site with avarage content, average visitors goes out and hires the most amazing writer and publishes 1 article - this content will face the same battle to attract attention - +1`s and likes and shares - purely because it is unknown.
  
  Now if that brilliant writer adds more content on a regular basis, this will build everything up and result in more likes, + 1 shares and mentions. -
  
  this makes sense in my head :)
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  Justin Y: +Tim Capper I always thought that +1`s were counted as a vote, similar to Google reviews.  I could be wrong, but that`s what I`ve heard from day one since +1 came to life.  A vote could be used for quality but I don`t know if it has a direct impact on a sites rank.  Again I could be wrong. 
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  Edwin Jonk: As far as I know many social signals are behind closed walls. Even if everything is public like a retweet it might be that it is blocked by robots.txt. Not sure why but I think G was complaining about the nofollow tag once.... Basically G doesn`t have all the data so using that data will be biased. I am pretty sure G crawls and can count the social counts and what have you. But due to the fact they only see a small portion of the total data it is almost useless. 
  
  In short, I don`t think they use social data for ranking. But they do use social data for crawling. For example, when you plus one or tweet your new article Google might crawl it faster.
  
  On the other hand, one can argue that they do use G+ for ranking since Search Plus Your World. Furthermore there might be an indirect effect due to the fact social media is way to outreach.