Social Search’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

I’ve been quiet here recently; our moments-away launch of The WordPress Helpers has been keeping me busy.

But you can bet that with the year drawing to a close I’ve been trying to think of a way to put a bow on the idea of Influency in 2014. Yesterday the folks at TechCrunch spoon-fed it to me: social search is dead.

Except, it isn’t. Social search is very much alive; it just looks different than it used to.

What is Social Search … Really ?

Darned if I know. Darned if anyone does, but I can tell you that Frederick Lardinois is missing the boat way worse than someone who writes about social search ought to. From his article:

The basic idea behind social search was that with all of the links and reviews we share on social media, search results could be made more relevant by including (and highlighting) that data right on the search results page

Umm, no.

The idea behind social search always has been that your social activities matter, and nothing’s changed. Know how I know? Search Google for ‘Jeff Yablon’, and see what you get. No comment as to whether the two attorneys who share my name are worthy of their position, but I do know that if social search was dead then my Twitter and LinkedIn profiles wouldn’t be where you see them:

Anecdotal? maybe. But consider this: Answer Guy Central is in the top 1% of all web sites in the world in terms of both page views and visitors, and my name the computer language string ‘Jeff Yablon’ shows up on every one of the 7,000 pages of content here. Social search isn’t dead. Social Search will be very much alive until the mere idea of a person being ‘on’ a social network carries less weight than it needs to for social profiles to rank so highly.

Being Pretty may not have the same search value it used to, and yes, Google Authorship’s value has dropped considerably to you even if it’s still useful to Google. The bottom line remains that in search engine optimization the only thing that matters is what Google says matters. And Social Search is right at the top of the heap. Social Search has never been more alive, and it needs to be a centerpiece of your content marketing strategy in 2015.