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By using the open graph protocol you can control how the like/share/recommend appears on a Facebook Wall. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/

That is what I was thinking. Thanks for checking!

So you wanted to know if they will show all shares and recommendations or just selected shares, etc? I haven't seen any shares that were "ignored", but of course how could you really tell anyways? I think if the SEOmoz staff wanted to try an experiment, they could look at the top 10 results for a single term and have a whole network of friends share those pages, then look at the results again and see if all of them have shares.

Hi Thanks for the speedy response. We actually use the volusion system, so it would be the volusion shopping cart. Our site is here: http://www.americanhospitalityfurniture.com. I do not think its an open source.

I'm talking about having the +1 button on pages of your website - e.g. product pages (info here). If there have been a number of people +1 a particular product then that may help the position of that page organically - I think even if you aren't signed in. You wouldn't +1 at the SERP stage if you haven't been on the site but your friends might have done which could input into it. All guesses though

_ Is it better to keep things status quo and not give Google the data or potentially introduce a new signal to Google that might be negative if CTR is not high enough?_ If you don't add it, the signal could look as a 0 to Google (no social sign of life)... that could be finally worst than having few +1. I think that we have to forget SEO has it was since few months ago, and start thinking SEO-Socially. SEO and SM are getting closer, and surely Social Signals are playing a big part in the rankings, directly or not. What is sure, is that if you have a great site, with great contents that answer to users needs, has all to gain with the social sharing. So, yes, start play the social game. But don't fall in the opposite risk: to forget traditional SEO tactics, because they still count a lot. The philosophy is that Search Marketing has become a wider playfield, with more tactics and web marketing disciplines that influence it. The real secret is to create a coordinated internet marketing strategy and stop thinking one tactic at the time.

As soon as I get mine Dmitry I'll invite you. What is your gmail address? PM me.

Yes, watch Rand's White Board Friday on 2011 Ranking Factors. I just put it on my site yesterday. It's at the bottom: http://www.shipoverseas.com/us/ship-car/europe/shipping-car-to-germany.html

Thanks Tom. I got your e-mail. It says "full" at the moment but it looks like you will be very popular on Google with lots of new friends

Hi Olivier, Here's FaceBook API policy : If you exceed, or plan to exceed, any of the following thresholds please contact us as you may be subject to additional terms: >100M API calls per day. Source : http://developers.facebook.com/policy/ So, are you planing to have over 100M API calls per day? Best regards, Guillaume Voyer.

Some. I think that's all anybody knows right now lol. I watched a seminar from Distilled's LinkLove set where it was explained that in an experiment, a bunch of retweets boosted a site with just one link above a competing, similar site with a lot more links. The topic as a whole though seems to be in discussion a lot at the moment, with blogs, etc... talking about it, and of course research being posted here at SEOmoz. I think the general consensus is that it has value, and that value is likely to increase, but I haven't seen anywhere as yet where there's much agreement about just how much value there is in it. I assume we'll be seeing something soon enough though Please do anybody correct me if I'm wrong, it would be great to see if there are any hard & fast stats out there. There is the ranking factors of course... which provide a good guideline: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-4

thanks guys

I think this Q&A about contracts should help get you started. There's some links to really great blog posts about legal stuff in there. You may also consider asking a private Q&A, and requesting Sarah Bird's assistance if possible. Does this help?

Yes though it's going against me right now as I cannot Tweet. We've been sitting at AU $217.50 and no movement I will end the auction early and give the Tweet to the highest bidder. If anything we made two hundred bucks to our charity!

You mean monitoring as in you just want to see what's going on? Social Mention, Ice Rocket, Board Reader, Search.Twitter, Google Blogsearch, etc, etc, etc. If you just want to see what's going on now and then, I'd set up what some people call a social media listening station. It's pretty straightforward, is very flexible, and runs through whatever your favorite RSS reader is. If you need more, take a look at the answers here: http://www.quora.com/What-social-media-tools-like-Radian6-SM2-etc-cost-less-than-500-month

I've done a lot of work on both researching how my competitors are received on social media (especially on Twitter) and hope I can provide some personal insight to help. We've been able to granularly develop a fan base for a brand I represent, but larger competitors have a naturally easier time engaging their social media following and then converting them towards their social media campaigns they run. For me, I have found a lot of leverage developing relationships with video bloggers as they have a prominent role in my market. By creating these relationships we are able to genuinely reach the video blogger's audience and run campaigns by ourselves that run simultaneously or in conjunction when video reviews come out. A large part has been understanding where conversations are being held and how to get their attention. In terms of social media, I've started to test a mix of online strategies such as retargeting ads mixed in with social media efforts which has brought in more sales then per se strictly focusing on social media. Being brought on to do in-house social media for a few brands, I would say its a mixed strategy, not just focusing on growth in your fan bases and engagement isn't enough. My initial objective when I started the in-house work was to induce conversation where now it is on growing sales and brand awareness. It involves product pitches, PR, marketing, advertising, guest blogging, etc., etc. with social media helping to tie together and fill in gaps that has helped to generate the sales. As others said, it is about goals- very specific goals for what you are trying to do. My mistake at the beginning was growing "conversation" and "engagement", which is not really a goal. Generating sales for Product A through blog coverage for the spring has brought in tangible and quantifiable terms. The latter has continued to bring in better success both in terms of sales and growing social media channels. While I do believe social media is a long term commitment and serves a place in directly growing sales, I believe a mixture of different online practices with social media tied in is a better bet.

Just make sure that you're not violating copyright when you repost these. I've seen some posts that were compilations of copyrighted images found on the web, with some nasty comments on the post from the original artist.

I think if Askimet doesn't work you should implement the facebook comments plugin.