Will Google +1 Benefit Digital Marketing Campaigns?

According to recent digital marketing news reports, Google has pushed the Panda update to many countries outside the Unites States. Online marketers are keeping a close watch on how this has affected leaders in the digital marketing industry, and how search engine rankings are changing.

Most digital marketing professionals are not really surprised about the way things have developed. While, no one knows exactly how website rankings have truly changed, various indicators point to top ranking websites taking big hits. The widespread presence of content farms, and high rankings for poor content sites, necessitated the development of the Google Panda algorithmic update. Also, there was a visible disparity between content that was socially shared, and Google rankings.

A large majority of digital marketing specialists have failed to notice that the Google Panda update not only aims to weed out content farms, but also helps Google to become more socially-focused. A few weeks after the Panda update was announced, the search engine giant launched 'Google +1'. This new feature is expected to boost the effectiveness of Google's ranking algorithm.

While 'Google +1' offers a huge amount of data, which can be used to determine website rankings, many believe that it is not really helpful in measuring the quality of digital marketing content on a website. This is difficult to say for sure. Who knows, in the past, Google could easily have been leveraging signals from social networks like Twitter, only to give high rankings to low-quality websites.

Digital marketing experts know that the relationship between high-ranking content and user experience is very strong. In recent times, Google has had problems measuring this very relationship. In fact, a large majority of content which is shared on social networking websites is highly curated. On the other hand, some types of shared content, though of excellent quality, can be very difficult for search engines to index. This includes infographics, interactive content, and videos that are not hosted on YouTube.

In a world, where it is so easy for digital marketing companies to create and distribute content, the process of optimising content for search engines is considered to be secondary, to ensuring that content becomes viral on social networks. This was compounded by the fact that most social interaction happened outside Google's proprietary systems; and perhaps out of their instant analytical reach.

Therefore, it became imperative for Google to modify their search algorithm to get rid of poor quality content (through Panda), and include a feature to directly collect signals from social media sites (through Google +1). The digital marketing world is waiting to see if the search giant begins to include stronger social signals in its search results pages from 'Google +1', or whether 'Google +1' flops like their Wave or Buzz products.

Qudos Digital is a leading digital marketing agency and can be contacted on 020 8891 2077 or info@qudosdigital.co.uk.

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