Image by jm3 via Flickr
Google’s answer to the facebook like button is the +1 button, and guess what it’s about to get crazy up in here. More +1′s will equal higher rankings, and anything that can be used to manipulate rankings will be fair game. Up until now social data has been something Google has had to actively mine, now it’s going to be shipped over on a silver platter. You just can’t give Google that much data and not expect them to use it. How long is it going to take somebody to write a script that will have 1,000 fake Google accounts giving a thumbs up to highest bidder. So they devalue shallow accounts, then paid +1′s become the new paid links.
Paid links are old school, paid +1′s are what all the cool kids are doing nowadays. Build some authority Google profiles and grab more 1 ups than Mario on mushrooms. How do you think the web spam team will tweak +1 signals in 14 months to counteract increased social spam? Oh you weren’t thinking that far ahead. Oops…