Social Data as a factor in Search Results

How do you know if something is valuable before you even get to see it? Well if you are Google you’d use links (or more accurately Page Rank which is derived from links).  There is however one massive limitation with links, only content producers create links.

Based on a social media content creators report produced in Feb 2010 only 1 in 10 internet users actually create online content. Which means that 10% of users are making a massive impact in content discovery. This started to change in mid 2004 when websites such and Digg.com and Reddit made an appearance, users were able to have a say in the value of content by marking (voting) the content up or down which would increase/decrease the exposure to users.

The value of the Digg system didnt go unnoticed at Google and during 2008 they were in discussions to by Digg.com for a purported $200 Million. Unfortunately for Digg the sale was cancelled during the due dilligence process - but by then the idea was formed:

Social Voting allows non content creators to help systems evaluate the value of content.

This is great at a wholesale level giving broad community opinion but it doesn’t help when I search for “Great Music” and get returned Justin Bieber because 100,000 pre-teens have voted for it.  Facebook took this idea and brought it to the social network level with the Like button - allowing you to see the “likes” of friends and acquaintances - people with whom you no doubt share interests and preferences.

Its taken three long years for Google to get on the bandwage and produce the +1 system. A method of both voting for preferred content and seeing the preferences of people in your network of friends:

If fraudulent voting can be accurately detected and filtered by Google I think we’ll see the weighing of +1 data heavily factor into the search engine results. Perhaps even rivalling link data.