I also agree that the direction things are heading and (we both know Google is tooling up for this) is social mentions as votes.

Good stuff! Fun to talk about it. I was thinking I may write a blog post on this topic over at Vertical Measures Blog and one other tidbit I stumbled across this week as well. If I do I will surely drop you a link and credit for the inspiration.

- Chris

I have a rock star musician friend who always used to say that “to be famous in every small town is the same as being famous nationally.” In other words, who cares if it pumps the domain? Change the SERPs one user at a time by influencing individuals search patters. Tweak them in other channels. Dude…”Go to Google, Keyword “[keyword].” There are other tactics like “search Google for domain.com/brandedDirectory.”

The rest is semantics. The real question is “how does YOUR behavior affect others’ personalized results. Well, SearchWiki bombed and we thought that was where we were goin’ with that one. Ultimately social votes are where we’re going in some form or another. Exactly how the socio-behavioral grid and behavior of individuals influences other users’ SERPs is conjecture to you and I. @mattcutts knows .

I believe the actions of others does already or will shortly impact SERPs. Google rolls stuff out overnight sometimes without nary a peep. They only say out loud what QTeam PR says to say, using the sound bytes all (or most on the teams) agree will be least inflammatory and disruptive to the Google ecosystem. Art the end of the day, I expect that social influencers broadcasting and rebroadcasting your stuff, will help the specific content and the site.