Webwork - 5:09 pm on Sep 4, 2011 (gmt 0)

People get the question wrong, all the time.

The question isn't "Will Google like/value my site?".

The question is "Will people like/value my site?".

Google will eventually be irrelevant if it doesn't focus on the latter.

At one time links represented sufficient/valid social voting, genuine human intelligence = "people must really value this site". Then links from "certain sites" represented such a vote - authoritative sites, etc. - but even that model became subject to manipulation as links increasingly became a currency of exchange.

Google gets that it faces irrelevancy in the discovery process if it fails to take into account social votes, endorsements, social signals, personal/behavioral signals, etc. Ergo the effort to use social factors to help rank websites.

Why would anyone vote for your site? Okay, they're your sisters, so you got 3 votes.

So, what else you got? Who else?