Everything Google says about “Social Signals” In SEO from Matt Cutts, John Mueller, Gary Illyes (Official)

Googlers have consistently stated that social media signals (likes, shares, comments, followers) are not a direct ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm.¹ However, they acknowledge the indirect benefits, such as driving traffic and earning natural backlinks.

From Matt Cutts

Going back to 2010, when Matt Cutts (then head of Google’s Search Quality Team) acknowledged Google had tested incorporating social signals into rankings but backed off the idea. From there it became a standing line. John Mueller has said that as far as he knows, Google doesn’t have signals in its web search ranking algorithm based on follower counts on Twitter or likes on Facebook, and Matt Cutts explained that Facebook and Twitter pages are treated just like any other indexed page — if Google can crawl it, it gets included in results, but that’s just normal indexing, not a social-specific boost. Gary Illyes was even more blunt when asked directly at an event whether Google factors social into SEO, saying “the short version is, no, we don’t,” and has joked that social media links count for about as much as a single drop in an ocean for PageRank

• Social Signals (Likes, Followers) Not Used for Ranking:
  

  “But as far as doing any special work to say that you have this many followers on Twitter or this many likes on Facebook, to the best of my knowledge, we don’t currently have any signals like that in our web search ranking algorithm.”

  (Circa January 2014)

• Social Pages are Crawled Like Any Other Page:
  

  “Facebook and Twitter pages are treated just like any other indexed pages, Matt explains. If Google is able to crawl it on Facebook and Twitter, it will be included in the search results.”

  (January 2014)

• Correlation vs. Causation:
  

  “An awesome piece of content doesn’t rank well because it has a lot of Facebook likes, it ranks well because it’s awesome, and in turn it gets shared on Facebook a lot because it’s awesome.”

  (January 2014).

   

From John Mueller

• Social Signals Do Not Directly Help Organic Rankings:
  

  “…social signals do not directly help in organic rankings.”⁷ (Reported as a general statement made more than once).

• YouTube Links and Ranking/Indexing:
  

  “links on YouTube videos won’t help with SEO or getting your content to rank faster…⁸ they also do not help get your content indexed any faster.”

  (December 2022)

• Links on Pages and Quality:
  

  “Just because there are links on a page doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good… So you can add value to your website by having links on those pages, but it’s not the case that just because you have links then we’ll suddenly see your website as being higher quality.” (Referencing the practice of linking to high-authority sites like Wikipedia).

   

From Gary Illyes

• Social Signals Not Used for Ranking:
  

  When asked at an event if Google takes social into account for SEO, Gary Illyes responded: “The short version is, no, we don’t.” 

• Social Media Links Count:
  

  Gary Illyes has even joked that social media links count “as much as a single drop in an ocean” for PageRank.

• Twitter Data as Search Signals:
  

  When asked if they would be using data from Twitter as search signals: “To the best of my knowledge, we are not using anything like that.”

  (June 2015)

Social Signal Questions People Also Ask

Research Resources

Are Social Signals & Shares A Google Ranking Factor?

Does high social media engagement mean higher search rankings? What does Google say about social signals and their impact to SEO? Read on to learn more.

Search Engine Journal