If this guy is right, it's a game changer

Having both worked for Bing HRM and having the misfortune of using that search engine once or twice the cynic in me says they're doing this in lieu of a good quality algorithm.

Why do the hard work when Facebook can do it for them?

Oh Great!
Now Bing has their own version of Matt Cutts!...lol

Thanks for the link.

Have a Great Day!
Michael

Perhaps they are trying to drive focus to what THEY want, instead of what is really happening?

Ahhh very interesting. Time to make billions of Facebook accounts.

See fiverr for people who will get you 'likes' by the thousands - that will take care of it!

Don't think we could totally switch over to this model. Who's going to "like" information on hemorrhoids (673,000 searches a month) or "cheat on wife" (33,100 searches) or any of the other billions of keyword terms that people search for everyday but would never share? Practically the only things I see being shared regularly by people are stupid viral videos and occasionally news stories. I just don't see this being a viable model at all.

Amen the guys above me.

It will be in some markets, but not in others. In desperate buyer markets, it wont be as prominant and G wont base as much of their algo on it.

Joe Likes Milfhunter.com

SEO keeps changing anyway. I suppose it'll be a wait and see.

Until sites start underperforming we'll carry on I suppose.

LOL at how they're copying Google. What will their "+1" be called?

I really dislike the implication that something's better just because more people like it. I don't think a lot of people like vegetables but they're good for you. Even without tinkering, results can be skewed--for example, Wal-mart will always have more likes than a Bob-Mart because Bob is a newbie.Even if Bob offers superior widgets.

And it's like a phone survey: the only people taking part in a phone survey are the people who answer the phone. People still have an opinion if they don't answer the phone for the survey, and people like websites even if they don't bother voting for them.

I don't think search engines will devolve into popularity contests.....well, not completely.

To be fair, recently I've noticed on Google that things people in my "social circle" have shared are bumped up to the bottom on the 1st page of the SERPs so I think it can play some role in ranking for certain keywords. For example if I type in "Red Sox" on the bottom of the first page there are three links that were recently shared by my Twitter friends.

So yes, certain social media elements can and should be considered for certain keyword phrases; however, I don't think you can use this as a major factor.

Game changer?

Please.

This would be WAY easier to hijack than even backlinking. At least backlinking you do actually have to do something.

Buying or getting likes by the thousands would be super easy. Buy up proxies by the hundreds/thousands and then program a bot to hit "like" on all your sites over and over again. Congratulations, you now have higher rankings.

Plus you have all the problems with mentioned above - certain topics people wouldn't want to like.

Rob

It's not a game changer, but the writing is on the wall. It won't only be results based on social proof, but results based on what your own friends like.

Think about it - for me, I don't have time to waste cruising the web looking non business related stuff, so I rely on friends to email me with what's hot, funny, whatever. Same with search - I'm far more likely to click on a like to something my family and friends like as opposed to strangers.

It's nothing new...that's how anything goes viral in the first place.

Doubtful if you ask me.
Keyword combinations are entirely too divers to facilitate such a model.
However, for specific items, this is practical, such as the ratings that appear alongside certiain listings in search results.

if it were possible to filter results to show only LIKE - ENABLED results, people might catch on as they have a preference for human-vetted content.

Having a Like feature would be too easily exploitable.

Well, if I headed up Bing and had under 30% of the marketshare in search, and my closest competitor was pushing towards 60% -- I'd say that, too.

Traditional search is changing, to be sure, but it's changing for SEOs and business owners way more than it's changing for consumers or searchers.

If you ask 10 people to search the same word or phrase and screencap the results, you'll see 10 different set of results. Personalized. And it's not just if you're logged into google. So for a business owner or SEO, it's getting harder to rank. There are posts here all the time from people confused because they "saw" their site on page 1, but no one else does. That's real common now.

Sure, with personalized search we see sites based on what we've searched, sites we've been to, what our friends "like," etc -- but where is all that showing up??? IN search results. Traditional search isn't dying by a long shot. We're just getting more personal results -- universal results are long gone. Not dying. Dead.

But search itself -- not going anywhere. And out of every 100 people that search for something, maybe 28 are doing it at Bing. So you know... grain of salt stuff.

What would be really interesting is if any search engine can personalize the search engine results based on demographic/lifestyle/attitudinal segments. For example, if I am researching for laptops, I would like to know the laptops people of my age, income level, occupation and attitude purchase.

Maybe I am asking too much

I think he's talking about a kind of Search where people "vote" on the sites with the most relevance. Google sort of has that already if you're logged in.

Bing ... who's Bing? lol
Until most people use Bing, I don't even think about Bing. It brings so little traffic to my sites, it's not worth considering.

Imagine you are a man suffering from Erectile dysfunction and are looking for ways to overcome it, would you "like" the article so that all your Facebook friends notice that you may be suffering this problem? I don't think any man would do that! So there are niches where this social thing cannot be considered as part of the metrics since the niche itself is no social at all .

Remeber Bing has some deal with Facebook (I think Microsoft owns some chunk of the company) so they will want to spread information favoring their own systems, basically because they know that Bing has no chances to overcome Google but Facebook could.

English is not my first language. I hope I made my thoughts clear

I still don't see any other metric being better than links. Perhaps they just need to make the performance of a link more complex.

Don't think it's going to change anytime soon, but I do think Google is screwing a lot of good sites over recently.

The only reason Bing is mentioning this is because they know they cannot compete with Google. Heck they already got caught using Googles search data because they are too lazy to make their own algorithm.

Now they are trying to start something completely in left field because what you like and what I like are completely different so this whole "vote" thing will never work.

Letting the youth of the day decide what is factually correct and relevant really sums up the dumbing down of society.

It is like when a legal subject is presented on this forum: every man and his dog has an opinion on what's correct but none of the answers are consistent, lack emotionally bias, or are referenced by reliable and knowledgeable authorities on the matter.

The Google algorthim is flawed but in my opinion it is still the best way for correct information to be presented. It will be improved.

This is the PPC model and can be easily implemented. Would not be surprised if Google already has a component to take this into account for ranking sites, or at least thinking about it. It just makes sense to provide better results and a matter of time, maybe within a year or two.

This is not likes where you'd click a button. It's liking simply by clicking a link because you feel it offers what you searched for. The sites getting more clicks move up the rankings. Just like the PPC model. Your organic listings will have a quality score.

Now that doesn't mean traditional search is dying, failing or doesn't work anymore as he is quoted as saying. It's just taking it to another level. Saying it's dying is ridiculous. I just don't think any search engine will go to a pure "like" model. It will still be about the keywords and the "likes" of others backlinking to you. It will be the same, only better.

When this happens, it will be a game changer. It's the people who constantly post in forums that say "I'm on top but not getting any clicks" and not getting it who will suffer most. Those who are already optimizing to attract the clicks are going to benefit.

So instead of selling backlinks we'll switch over to selling likes. I wish they would hurry up and make the change so I can 2quit spending a small fortune every month for seo hosting for my blog network.

wow ok. what about twitter followers? digg likes? is it all gonna eventually be the social media stuff?

Bwahahaha...

Following in the footsteps of a Google FAIL!

That's some funny $hit, login to Bing!

Nobody cares about Bing or hotmail.

This sounds like some crap someone at AOL (lol) came up with, from back in 1996.

One word, Fiverr!

Search engines are always looking for ways to thwart the spammers, and as Google recently mentioned they will be looking at reviews from real people to determine a site's position in the future (with the aim that the spammers or those hoping to get an unfair advantage would have to fork out a lot of money to reviewers to get their site ranked high, which hopefully would put them off)

search engines have started to count social signals for ranking. So it can be true.

I've seen this +1 mentioned a few times the last few weeks and until now, had no idea what they were talking about. I've never seen it but seems you have to be logged in. However, what I'm talking about is not an actual like or +1 button. It is the quality of a link as voted by searchers clicking on the link. If someone clicks on the second link and not the first, it would get a bit of a boost for the next searcher.

Even if there will be a "selling likes" economy, I'm sure the search engine have ways to compensate for this. Many ways to do this, most if not all is simply an extension of what they do now. So buying likes is not going to work.

This can't be true...as others have mentioned it would be WAY to easy to manipulate and take advantage of...fiverr comes to mind...

That guy needs to have his head examined.

They've been tinkering with what I call "subjective searches" for a while.

The problem is that these too can be gamed by clever people.

You can buy Likes, Followers, and there are free (or paid) tools out there to find and add these things for a given page, website, or account.

I think it is too easily manipulated, which means that backlinks will continue to be an influence, as these backlinks are more difficult to get, in reality.