You may not be aware of the fact that Google has secretly started to hire you as a professional rating expert. While still being deployed across their vast universe, you should know that it will impact the way you view and get results from Google.
Yup, I’m talking about a social quality rater. I’m using this as a spin off the the official Quality-Raters, who will rate “query-page” tasks. Their duties are officially listed as needing to:
- Research and understand the query
- Evaluate the page based on its relevance and its utility to the user
- Assign a rating from the rating scale
What is a quality rater in Google’s eyes? The official task list is shown above.
However, you as the a human social rater will have a similar, and more easily accessible “task”. It’s not obligatory, but using this new system you will help Google rate content and pages – to help others – that in turn will help them.
Are you ready for +1?
The “+1” social content recommendations system is not the same as a “Like” button in Facebook at this time.
Launched on March 30 in limited release, it promises to the be first significant step into social network “voting” outside of personal search. Google is hiring for, and spending money on Social development initiatives. Recent analysts financial statements also prove it. Facebook is a leader in this arena, Google is not, and trying to catch up. Social signals is impacting search engine results right now (Twitter, for example) – and it’s continuing.
Each time you “rate”, or give a thumbs up for a particular item, you’ll send signals to Google that you consider it a positive vote. This doesn’t impact natural or paid listings right now – but, it will. The speed of adoption and inclusion in affecting ranking results – let’s just follow this closely.
The paid ads will get a boost, since more folks considering a higher “social like” counter in ads will click on them. This will help on click-through-rates (CTR), which can/will impact quality scores, and better placement in Google adwords.
Again, stories of “SEO is dead” appeared quickly when this was announced, but SEO will never be dead. Keywords, content and links drive the web and SEO (and social) is stage center. Knowing how the search engines work (as much as possible), and providing them with useful, readable content that is optimized for users and search engines will not change. It hasn’t since I started on the web in the mid-90’s.
What is the +1 Google Service? Take a look at the google business video on the +1 possibilities.
What do you think? What will you do differently today? What impact do you think it’ll have?
P.S.
An older version of the official Google quality rater document can be found here. (Thanks Huomah)
Related articles
- What Its Like To Be A Google Search Engineer (searchengineland.com)
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