Wanted: Facebook Shares

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According to Matt Cutts, correlation does not equal causation:

From his QA at SMX with Danny Sullivan (SMX Advanced Liveblog: ‘You & A’ Keynote With Google’s Matt Cutts)

MC: This is a good example of why correlation doesn’t equal causality because Google doesn’t get Facebook shares. We’re blocked by that data. We can see fan pages, but we can’t see Facebook shares.

DS: It could be just that the content is good.

MC: Exactly. It’s a signal that the content is good and that means you may get more links.
 


It’s Not “He Said, She Said” Over Google Rankings & Facebook Shares

"But It Does Crawl!

Google isn’t blocked from crawling all of Facebook, however. Indeed, it crawls many pages. Facebook wants many of those pages crawled.

Potentially, if you share a link on your personal wall, Google might see that share. After all, it does see a limited version of personal walls. This is one way it can determine some of your Facebook friends."
 
Statistical analysis: Does Google Use Facebook Shares to Influence Search Rankings? | SEOmoz

The final model performs moderately well, with the correlation coefficient between actual and predicted shares at 0.73. However, the mean Spearman correlation between the predicted number of shares and search position is 0.27, nearly as large as the baseline 0.30. This strongly suggests that our interpretation of Matt Cutts' statement is correct and Google is not using Facebook share data directly to rank.

Takeaways

Facebook shares, at least as related to Google searches, act as a sort of "super-metric", encompassing a variety of different factors (similar to SEOmoz's Page Authority and Domain Authority).
Don't stop sharing and generating brand engagement through Facebook! Driving deeper engagement through social media can only help your brand and likely has other positive benefits (by generating tweets or links, for example).
Earning Facebook shares (probably) will not directly boost your Google rankings (though it may have positive effects that indirectly promote links, tweets and other signals Google may use).
 
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