How Google’s +1 Button Affects SEO

Since the days of Google Buzz, the +1 button has been a mystery to users and content producers alike. It’s different from Facebook’s “Like” button, in that it doesn’t directly share content to a user’s social stream. But the cultivation of a social graph has long been the goal of Google, and its connection to search was likely inevitable.

Google defines the +1 as a feature to help people discover and share relevant content from the people they already know and trust. Users can +1 different types of content, including Google search results, websites, and advertisements. Once users +1 a piece of content, it can be seen on the +1 tab in their Google+ profile, in Google search results, and on websites with a +1 button.

The plot thickened last month when Google launched Search plus Your World. Jack Menzel, director of product management for Google Search, explained that now Google+ users would be able to “search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.” According to Ian Lurie from the blogConversation Marketing, in Search plus Your World, search results that received a lot of +1s tend to show up higher in results.

Google has come out and described the purpose of a +1, but hasn’t necessarily explained the direct effect a +1 has on search ranking. Here’s a breakdown of what we currently know.

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Does a +1 Affect my Site’s Performance in Social Search?

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The +1 has an indirect effect on your site’s search rank. This does not mean the more +1’s a link has, the higher rank it achieves in traditional search results. Take this scenario:

When a Google+ user +1’s a piece of content, he gives it his “stamp of approval.” Then, say one of his connections from Google+ searches for the same or related topic. Because of Search plus Your World, his friend is more likely to click on the same link the original user +1’d (when a signed-in user searches, his Google results may include snippets annotated with the names of connections who have +1′d the content). This is because content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers, according to Google.

This is also true for users who are not signed in to their Google account when they search. When a user searches for the same phrase, the results might display the total number of +1’s a link has received, which is another validation that it’s a relevant link.

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How Does This Relate to SEO?

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Since the +1′d link has a chance at a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR), there is a greater potential the link will be shared, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any social network. An experiment by Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, tested the relationship between Twitter and Facebook shares and search results in Google. He found a positive correlation between the number of retweets and shares a link received and its search ranking. This means, the more the link was passed around on Twitter and Facebook, the higher the search rank of the page. This in turn led to better SEO.

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What’s the Take-Away?

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A Google +1 can indirectly lead to a better page rank. A greater number of +1’s increases a link’s potential for a high CTR, which could lead to increased social sharing, and in turn can increase its Google search rank. What’s important to note here is the correlation, not causation, between +1′s, other social shares, and search rank.

The bottom line is, the SEO effects of a +1 are very indirect, which means traditional SEO practices should not be ignored. SEO methods such as link building, relevant keywords, and URL structure have a more significant impact on page ranking.

The Google +1 feature is still in its infancy of course, and more data needs to be gathered to draw a statistical correlation to search. As Google said, “For +1′s, as with any new ranking signal, we are starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”

SEO experts, such as Erin Everhart from 352 Media Group, have a positive outlook on the future of social search. She says, “I don’t think we live in a world, nor will we ever live in a world, where any social cue doesn’t have influence over SEO.”

Are you seeing the effects of Google +1 on your SEO? Will the +1 eventually have a direct effect on search rank? Share your experiences in the comments.

SAP HANA Moves into the Ecosystem

Oversight Systems is among the first SAP partners to start developing on the SAP HANA platform. Oversight CEO Patrick Taylor discusses the experience.

In a perfect world, businesses would always pay the lowest prices for goods and supplies, employees would never fudge their expense reports, and ERP systems and processes would be infallible. Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. Employees sometimes commit internal fraud and business processes don’t always reflect the regulatory policies in place. Some people might say this is simply a cost of doing business. Oversight Systems is not one of them.

Oversight Systems provides continuous analysis (CA) software, a technology that allows companies to identify policy violations and detect fraud through real-time analysis of all transactions across any ERPor financial transaction system. Patrick Taylor, CEO of Oversight Systems, explains: “If a sales representative is offering unauthorized discounts to customers, for example, or if an employee is consistently claiming abnormally high expenses, the CA software will catch it.”

With Oversight, companies are able to monitor activities in the areas of procure-to-pay, card spend, travel and expense, accounting and reporting, HR and payroll, and order-to-cash.

Perfect partners

SAP and Oversight established a partnership several years ago to ensure that customers’ backend SAP systems integrate seamlessly with Oversight’s CA solution, which is today the only SAP Endorsed Business Solution for continuous analysis. This means that it has undergone an assurance cycle similar to SAP’s own solutions. Thanks to the partnership, SAP customers are able to complement and extend their SAP ERP and SAP BusinessObjects Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) applications with Oversight’s CA solution.

And now, Oversight Systems is among the first SAP partners to develop on SAP’s in-memory platform. Oversight is currently working to bring the benefits of SAP HANA to its CA solution. So, in the near future, customers stand to gain even more from the two companies’ ongoing collaboration, namely real real-time analytics for improved detection of fraud and policy violations.

According to Taylor, continuous analysis is ideally suited to the SAP HANA platform: “We run very complex, multi-dimensional analytics that push databases really hard. So there is a demonstrable advantage to be had from using HANA.” That’s because in the error and fraud detection business, knowing sooner – of a policy violation or fraudulent activity – is always better. And SAP HANA makes that possible.

Knowledge is power

Oversight’s CA solution used to run analytics on a daily or hourly basis, and in some cases, every few minutes. However, the more frequently analyses were conducted, the simpler they had to be. With SAP HANA, that is no longer the case. “In a broad sense, HANA lets you run faster than every few minutes and with a more complex set of analytics than you could before,” says Taylor.

This capability is best demonstrated in the area of spend monitoring, a part of the CA solution that examines every line item of every purchase order as it’s submitted for approval. The solution evaluates prior purchasing history and vendor contracts to determine if the company should negotiate a lower price or go to a particular vendor to get the best deal.

Previously, an employee would submit the purchase order and an analysis would be run after the fact. On SAP HANA, the analysis occurs as the employee inputs the data, and if the system determines that a better price is available, a notification will pop up on the employee’s monitor. The employee can act upon this information right away. “The difference with SAP HANA is that it empowers employees to make smart decisions for the business,” says Taylor. “It makes you more efficient.”

A new approach

On the one hand, SAP HANA supercharges existing analytic applications so that they’re able to analyze more data at a much faster pace. On the other hand, it provides businesses with an entirely new breed of analytics that weren’t even possible before.

This can be seen in the financial sector, which deals with particularly large volumes of data. In the past, most financial companies were only able to run pre-calculated analytics, and they had to do so overnight.SAP COPA Accelerator software, one of the first applications developed on the SAP HANA platform, introduced real-time reporting and analytics to the financial sector.

For Taylor, the changes that SAP HANA has brought to the financial sector and to continuous analysis reflect a larger shift in the way companies now approach analytics: “The whole big-data space is now saying that there are really compelling insights to be found if we start looking at specific instances and searching for the interesting anomalies. We’re going to move from measuring our world in averages, to measuring our world in discrete events.”

This is the belief that lies at the heart of SAP HANA: that more information leads to greater insight. That knowing sooner is always better.

Facebook’s New Social Apps

For businesses, the most important Facebook feature is no longer the Like button but rather the new kind of social apps. We take a closer look.

Frictionless sharing? Realtime serendipity? The words that Mark Zuckerberg used at f8 to describe the new Facebook may seem like lines straight out of a science fiction novel, but these funny-sounding phrases represent some pretty revolutionary ideas. In the previous SAP.info article, “Google+ vs. Facebook: Round 2″, you read up on frictionless sharing and the rationale behind it. Here, you’ll learn about its counterpart: realtime serendipity. By that, Facebook is referring to the new kind of social apps, built on the latest version of Open Graph, and the way people will interact with them.

If you read in your Ticker, for example, that “Karen is running in Central Park on Nike+” and “Joe is listening to California Sunrise on Spotify,” the hoped-for result is that you will also go for a run on Nike+, preferably while listening to that song on Spotify. These activities will then automatically appear on your Timeline and in your friends’ Tickers and News Feeds, and the ripple effect is set in motion.

It’s all going viral

Since Facebook’s Open Graph supports an unlimited combination of verbs and nouns, the possibilities for social apps are endless. The next time you take a look at your Ticker, you might find out that: “Joe is riding a Schwinn bike to work” or “Karen is reserving a table at Café Garbo.” It’s not hard to imagine that soon the “viral” phenomenon, which used to occur mostly around YouTube videos, will now also apply to restaurants, retail products, and the other minutiae that is shared via Facebook.

That’s why realtime serendipity, i.e. social apps, is the most important new feature on Facebook for businesses. In the previous article, we stated that businesses will have to do a lot more than accumulate Likes to stand out amidst the constant stream of updates. Social apps will enablecompanies to do that.

Let’s take Nike as an example. The company created an app, Nike+ GPS, that records your pace, distance, and route – it even cheers you on throughout your run. The most important aspect of the app, however, is that it enables you to post your accomplishments on Facebook. This means that every time you – and every other user of the app – finish a run, the Nike brand is broadcast on countless Tickers and News Feeds, regardless of whether those users are Fans of Nike or not. With social apps, companies are able to reach a much wider audience than they previously could on Facebook.

Timeline Holds Business Potential

In the coming weeks, Facebook will make Timeline the default setting for private profiles around the world – but what does this mean for businesses?

At the moment, the mandatory transition to Timeline only officially applies to private individual profiles, but there are rumors that Facebook Pages – the public profiles for businesses and brands – will soon be switching to Timeline as well. Facebook will announce its plans for Facebook Pages at the upcoming Facebook Marketing Conference held in New York at the end of February.

Rumors and predictions aside, the integration of Timeline into all user profiles holds significance for the numerous companies already using Facebook for marketing and communication purposes. Thanks to the new Open Graph apps that are a prominent feature of Timeline, businesses have the potential to reach a much wider audience than before and, at the same time, disperse their content in a more targeted fashion.

Previously, when a Facebook user liked a brand, product, or business, a notification would appear on their profile for some time before it eventually slid out of view. Now companies can develop social apps that are tailored to their customer’s on Open Graph, and customers and users are then able to interact with the brand on Facebook.

For example, when a user is listening to a particular song on Spotify or reading a certain article in The Washington Post via the social app, Facebook displays the information in real time on that user’s profile and in their friends’ Tickers and Newsfeeds. And the more a user interacts with an app, the higher Facebook will rank the notification, making it more visible not only in the profile of the user, but also in their friends’ profiles. It’s mass advertising and targeted marketing in one.

Even companies that don’t have a Facebook Page can benefit from the transition to Timeline. The new transparency into user interests will make it possible for businesses to conduct even more targeted ad placement with Facebook Ads.