SEO w/o Social Webinair experiment - how can RTs of a URL of a google search possibly affect the position of one of the search results?

[seomasters]

I missed the webinair but have just been going through the slides. Looking forward to watching the video when its up.

I have a question however regarding the experiment conducted by Rand to find out: Is Social Influencing Primary Algorithms (slides 7 - 20)  The suggestion is that an RT of a google search URL affects the ranking of one individual ranking site.

The +1 side of the experiment I understand completely - it is clear how Google can see that there is a social preference for the site and reward accordingly.

But how would retweeting the search result URL possibly affect its rankings?

Is the suggestion that those doing the experiment also clicked on the relevant link? And if so, how is Google discerning that this additional traffic is down to Twitter?

I feel I am missing something incredibly obvious. Anyone want to help me out here?... otherwise I'm not going to sleep tonight...

[randfish]

Hi Chris - totally understand your question. The key is that the brand name is included in the search query and the test (in that particular case) was less about using the social networks for rankings, but to see if search volume itself and CTR could influence rankings (which it appeared to do).

You can read more about the experiment on search volume and CTR here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/experiment-google-rankings-w-search-volume

And more on the experiment to influence rankings with Google+ and Twitter here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/do-tweets-still-effect-rankings

Those should help clarify.

Cheers!

Rand