muzza64 - 12:38 pm on Dec 7, 2012 (gmt 0)

Apologies if this is a silly question, but what "social signals" is Google actually able to see?

I mean, they can't see into Facebook to see links and if someone clicks on a Facebook link directly to your site, how does Google get any information about that? Chrome?

Google+ is a different matter as it's their site so links, citations etc, are all at their disposal.

Are we talking about an increase in people searching on your website name? But that could be the result of any kind of marketing activity, in which case Google doesn't know the cause it just sees the new activity.

I have seen traffic rise when we've put more effort into social, but only for as long as we keep the effort up. Traffic searching on our name went up at the same time.