How Google+ Affected Social Shares and +1 Adoption Rates

July 10th, 2011 - Posted by dohertyjf to Behavior & Demographics

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Google announced the +1 button in March much to the enthusiasm and confusion of webmasters and SEOs the world over. "What's the point?", people asked. "Why should I +1 a site? Should I implement it on my site?"
It seems the answer now is clear, with the launch of the Google+ "social experiment" last week that has kept me from getting work done as Google continues innovating and brilliantly drawing me back to Plus everytime that little notification indicator turns red.
I'm not here to talk about that though, because we've put together a bit of data for you today about +1 integration and social sharing statistics. This post originally was conceived by Tom Critchlow and I before Google+ was launched, so it has gone through some iterations.
We wanted to get outside of our typical SEO circles though and see how the general public is adopting the button. To keep things interesting, I also gathered some well-trafficked SEO sites and their social numbers. What I have done is gathered the Technorati Top 100 sites and their RSS feeds. Then I pulled their 20 most recent blog posts (both before and after Plus was announced) and grabbed their +1, Twitter, and Facebook share data thanks to an awesome script by Tom Anthony.
The data got interesting pretty quick. Here are our findings.

Technorati Top 100 Stats

Since we were interested to find the rate of +1 adoption by the Technorati Top 100, we pulled the numbers before Google+ was launched and after. I removed the Gawker sites since their RSS feed is all-encompassing and skewed the numbers terribly. Here are the numbers for the other 95 Technorati sites:

The numbers changed thus: Pre Google+, only 22 had implemented the +1 button. After the launch of Google+, that number increased to 25. 22 of the sites had +1s, but 8 of those sites did not have the +1 button implemented! These were predominately technology sites, which is no surprise, but also two LA Times blogs (The Opinionator and L.A. NOW) as well as entertainment site TMZ. Takeaway: If you own or have a client who owns a technology, opinion, or entertainment site, you should implement the +1 button.

Average +1s per article, Pre and Post Plus Launch

As you can see, the average number of +1s per article for the Top 100 almost doubled. The number of +1s per SEO article also increased by about 30%. It is not surprising that SEO sites have more +1s than the Technorati Top 100 on average, but the increase is especially interesting given the next two charts.

Average Facebook Shares per Article and Ratio of Plus to FB Shares

Here are the average shares from the Technorati sites as well as SEO sites:

We must note that the Facebook share numbers went down for the Technorati sites, but increased for the SEO sites. One possible explanation for the SEO sites is that SEOs were sharing Google+ news on Facebook, but this is simply a hunch and not proven. Here is the most interesting statistic I found, the ratio of +1s to Facebook shares on the Technorati sites:

The number was cut almost in half. Perhaps we could guess preliminarily that the launch of Google+ has adversely affected the amount of information shared on Facebook? With the rise of the number of +1s and the decrease in Facebook shares, as shown by the last graph, I think this could be a safe assumption, at least with this limited data set. This graph might also support this hypothesis:

This graph shows that before Google+ was launched, there were 2 Facebook shares for every tweet given to articles on the Technorati Top 100. Post Google+ the ratio is almost even, with tweets being more prevalent than Facebook shares!

What do we do with this data now?

There are certainly some takeaways from the data presented. There are certain niches where it makes sense for us as SEOs to encourage our clients to implement certain sharing features. On other sites, especially in dodgier or more regulated industries, social share buttons do not make as much sense. One of the most interesting bits of information that came out of the data was the number of sites that have +1s, but do not have the button implemented on their site.

• 10 Technorati sites without the button have +1s; and
• all of the SEO sites I looked at have +1s, even though only 2/3 have implemented the button.

Based off these discoveries, I'd recommend that if you have an SEO site, it should have a +1 button. Even if +1s do not count for rankings at this point, they are displayed in the SERPs and therefore probably help with click-through rates. If +1s are used for rankings in the future, which I am not convinced of but still remains a possibility, then you will be one step ahead of the curve. Also, if you or a client has a site in one of these niches, you should probably have a +1 button on your site:

• Technology
• Opinion (Political or other)
• Celebrity gossip

This discovery is also interesting because it means that people +1d these from the SERPs, which is something we all wondered how we would do, and more importantly if people would do it. It appears that people do. I think this discovery reinforces that we as webmasters/SEOs (we are often both, after all) need to find ways to track social engagement around our sites. If we see engagement, we need to encourage it. Google has recently helped us accomplish this goal by adding +1 tracking to Analytics.

Making the most of your Facebook page profile picture

By: Keith Heustis

Facebook hasn’t always made it easy to figure out what size is best to use for a profile picture or how to control what your Facebook thumbnail looks like in news feeds and other areas of the site.
 
Some of that is changing and Facebook has made it easier to manage profile pictures, but for many Facebook users there is still some mystery involved in how to take full advantage of the options that Facebook offers. In this post I hope to dispel some of those mysteries.

Getting the right Size:

Let’s start off with some of the basic specs that Facebook provides. Facebook recommends that profile pics should be a maximum of 200px wide, while height can vary as needed with a maximum height of 600px allowed. Lets see what this looks like in practice. Below are three examples of different Facebook page profile pictures that utilize the full width of the Facebook specs, but have varying heights.

As you can see by utilizing the varying degrees of height there is a lot of room to creatively utilize the space of a Facebook profile picture. I am often surprised at the amount of businesses that fail to utilize this space.

Understanding How Facebook Crops Images:

Perhaps part of the reason that many pages don’t utilize the full depth is due to the extreme measure which Facebook will crop the profile image. This has forced many users to format their profile picture so that it is square and doesn’t get cropped in strange ways. Left unchanged Facebook will take a long image and crop it automatically smack dab in the middle of your profile picture to create a 50px by 50px thumbnail. The resulting image taken from our examples above would look like these below:

Default thumbnail cropping

As you can see these thumbnails are confusing to look at. I could never guess who or what these organizations are in a news feed or on someone’s wall. So how do we fix this? Let’s start by understanding exactly how Facebook works when it comes to cropping your profile picture. On an image that is 200px wide Facebook will utilize a 15px margin on either side before cropping, so when making a profile picture keep this in mind. An easy way to visualize how Facebook will crop your image is to simply use your image editing program of choice, in my case Photoshop, to create a 170px square semi-transparent box over your 200px wide image to see how much space you have to work with. Keep it centered on the profile image and you’ll see exactly how your thumbnail will look.

Cropping your picture in Facebook

Now for the part that most people don’t know about. Facebook actually allows you to change the position of the cropping area on your image. This was only just recently made much easier, so there’s no excuse to not take full advantage of this feature
Step 1. To see how this works simply go to your Facebook page and click the edit icon located in the upper right corner of your Facebook profile image. From the drop down menu that appears choose “Edit Thumbnail”.








Step 2. A dialog box will open allowing you to simply drag your image up and down and slightly side to side so that you can properly crop your profile image.

Design Tips:

Hopefully this little tutorial has given you some new insight on how to better utilize your Facebook profile image. From now on it may be helpful to think of your profile image as a banner ad. Using it to promote events, special offers, etc. are all great ways to effectively use this valuable space. As you design your new profile picture keep Facebook’s cropping specs in mind from the get go and make sure part of your image - preferably your logo - can be fully represented in the cropping scheme. As you can see below all of the thumbnails from our examples are now fully recognizable and carry a strong brand presence. Applying these ideas to your profile picture will allow you to have an advantage visually on crowded news feeds, walls and other important areas of Facebook.

 

Custom thumbnail cropping

If you’d like some help getting your Facebook profile picture freshened up or would like some advice on other ways to improve you social media efforts feel free to contact us we’d love to help!

 

UPDATE!

Facebook recently changed the maximum dimensions that are allowed for profile images. At the time of writing these dimensions where 200px wide by 600px high, however the new numbers are slightly smaller: 180px wide by 540px high. Please take these new dimensions into consideration when you design your profile image. Also keep in mind that from now on Facebook does not allow images that are more than three times as tall as they are wide. I hope that makes sense to everyone. Also a special thanks to Kathy Burckhardt for making these discoveries and sharing them in the comments below.