Links from relevant and important Web sites have always been one of the best ways to get traffic to a Web site or landing page. But how do you rate links that come from new platforms like Twitter and Facebook to a Web site or landing page?
Google treats these links the same whether they are from Facebook or Twitter, as they would if they came from any other Web site. It’s just an extension of the pagerank formula, where it’s not the amount of links, but how reputable those particular links are.
Even though links from Twitter or Facebook may be treat like any other link, they still come with things to keep in mind. On Facebook profiles are not public. When a profile isn’t public, Google can’t crawl it and it won’t get assigned a pagerank on the outgoing link if it can’t fetch the page to see what the outgoing links are. If the page is public, however, it might be able to flow pagerank. Most Twitter links are nonfollowed.
While Facebook and Twitter links may be treated like any other links, they do still come with things to keep in mind. For one, with Facebook, you have to keep in mind that a lot of profiles are not public. When a profile is not public, Google can’t crawl it, and it can’t assign pagerank on the outgoing links if it can’t fetch the page to see what the outgoing links are. If the page is public, it might be able to flow pagerank, Matt says. With Twitter, most links are nofollowed anyway.
“At least in our web search (our organic rankings), we treat links the same from Twitter or Facebook or, you know, pick your favorite platform or website, just like we’d treat links from WordPress or .edus or .govs or anything like that,” says Matt Cutts. “It’s not like a link from an .edu automatically carries more weight or a link from a .gov automatically carries more weight. But, the specific platforms might have issues, whether it’s not being crawled or it might be nofollow. It would keep those particular links from flowing pagerank.”