Is social media replacing links?

Social media sites such as Twitter, Wikipedia and Wordpress are "manipulating" the open web and if people continue to use them they could "lose" the free benefits of the internet, in the opinion of one sector commentator.

In his blog, John Andrews, a search engine optimisation consultant from the US, explains that links are code which webmasters used to publish on the web but that today people could do this without using code.

Mr Andrews added that those who build flexible tools today do so for personal gain and manage linking in a way that is not for the improvement of the internet.

As not as many links are being built as in the past, he asks what search engines should do about this.

In response to his comments, SEOBook's Aaron Wall said: "If enough such platforms keep growing then Google will have to evolve their algorithms to look beyond links, placing significant weight on other factors and/or some nofollowed links."

He added that until search relevancy algorithms evolve further, as much conversation as possible needed to be encouraged on independent sites.

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