We know both Google and Bing use social signals for rankings, even more so today from when I posted that article. In fact, some are worried it plays so much of a role that expert content will be effected negatively by the growth of social.

In any event, some webmasters at WebmasterWorld are suggesting that Google, since Panda, has turned the dial up on how much influence tweets from Twitter play in ranking content in Google.

One user said:

I think he is confused because most of those backlinks are discounted. It is more of Twitter’s signals outside of a backlink, which in a sense are kind of like backlinks. Hope that makes sense, if not, ask in the comments.

GoodROI, long time moderator at WebmasterWorld agreed, saying:

In any event, we know Google is looking at social for ranking signals but is it enough to make a huge ranking difference? I am not sure. Is it too much to be too influential on Google’s rankings? I am not sure.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.