While social media commentators have all been focused on Google+, something else has been happening at the Googleplex that may prove more significant. Google is changing how it rates and ranks web-pages towards a single, defining criteria: authority.

Firstly, in June, Google started to connect content that appears in search results with its author, by adding a Google Authorship Tag (a headshot photo and link, see above) to the right hand of the screen. This aims to provide another means of rating content, by enabling the searcher to pick content written by recognised authorities. Of course, to have your Authorship tag show up, you need to have a Google Account and link to your Google Profile from the content that you’ve published. There’s an explanation of how to do this here.

Secondly, as I’ve mentioned recently on this blog, Google have started to prioritise content that’s been Liked, re-Tweeted and +1′d over content that hasn’t been shared via social media. This democratisation of search is going to change the SEO industry dramatically over the next few years and, as Steve Rubel points out in his post on this topic, we should expect SEO budgets to shift towards social SEO in that time-frame too.

Lastly, Google News has launched a new programme of Authority Badges that rewards those people who read lots of new stories with badges that will appear on their Google+ Profile. This isn’t just a gaming feature (though I expect we’ll see lots of competition for badges), once we’ve been identified as authorities I don’t have any doubt that Google will use that information to rate or rank our contributions online.

This is fascinating stuff, but with my critical hat on, I would question Google’s concept of an “authority”. Is a person who gets 100 Likes on an article actually knowledgeable, or are they just appealing to the masses? (Perhaps adjustments in weighting of Likes/shares will account for this). Is a person who reads 100 articles on a topic any more knowledgeable than the guy who reads the 5 best articles on that topic? I guess Google will decide.

Social media marketers have often looked down on the murky, grey/black hat world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). But all that’s set to change. SEO and social media marketing are in the process of merging in an unholy, but potentially hugely valuable alliance. “Social Search” is the buzz phrase that’s grabbing headlines, but from the marketing perspective, what were talking about is social SEO.

I read a fascinating article from the mercurial SEOMoz today that sheds light on some of the big questions that many social media marketers are struggling with. Thankfully our SEO friends have done more homework on this and unearthed some fascinating answers:

Do Tweets, Likes and +1′s enhance your Google ranking?

Yes – absolutely they do. As you can see from the chart above, Google Buzz links, Facebook shares and Tweets all contribute to the ranking of a web-page, more so in fact than having the keyword as the first word in the title (a well-known old school SEO requirement). SEOMoz writer, Tom Crichlow, goes as far as to say “In my opinion this is why inbound marketing is going to overtake SEO as the primary function of SEO professionals. Engaging across social channels to get links, shares, likes, comments and +1s is going to be the future for generating organic traffic to your site”.

Can companies “Game” social media as they do with SEO?

Not easily. I’m sure they will find a way, but while setting up a bogus blog and linking to other sites simply requires a bogus email account, adding +1′s and Like’s requires the creation of a profile. Google and Facebook will doubtless use the amount of data they hold for an individual to rate the quality of their interactions and root out the “gamers”. By checking our your Google Dashboard, you can see how far reaching this data can go.

Does the authority of the social media user matter?

Yes – As this post explains, Google and Bing both look at the “Author Authority” (or “Social Authority”) when making decisions about the value to ascribe to social media mentions, +1′s and Likes. In a case of a Twitter user, this includes the # of followers they have and the # of people they follow. SEOMoz predicts that, in future, other indicators will come into consideration, such as the quality of friends/followers and the consistency of your relevance to the keywords being searched for.

I’m genuinely amazed that Social SEO isn’t dominating discussions on social media marketing today. If nothing else, Social SEO represents a wholly valid metric against which to measure a company’s social media engagement activities. Far from fluff and chatter, your Likes and re-tweets can now be shown contribute directly to lead generation. If you aren’t already, you should get on the social SEO band-waggon, and fast.

SEOptimise will be giving a presentation on opportunities in Social SEO in London on 19th September.

Useful, or an annoying gimmick?

So Google has speeded up search. Brilliant! But then again, it was pretty damn fast already, wasn’t it? I don’t recall popping out for a coffee while their servers chugged away before this announcement. So why the fuss?  I suppose it’s a differentiating factor from Bing, and in a market where the differences between search engines are dramatically narrowing, from a user perspective at least, this could be a selling point. It certainly has the gimmick factor and that’ll last at least a few weeks (Google Wave anyone?).

That said, I’m not 100% sure want my incomplete searches to flash before my eyes each time I do a search. I’ve always found predictive text searches more irritating than people who finish off my sentences, and I’ve already found myself shouting “Just wait!” at my screen, as Google leaps to early conclusions about what I’m interested in. In the end though, the result is the same. Which kinda makes you wonder what all the fuss is about.