Recent changes by Facebook to its Edge Rank algorithm brought an onslaught of criticism from brands and advertisers. Edge Rank determines which posts show up in Facebook users’ news feeds; since the change, brands have been seeing a decline in views of posts they make to their pages as the algorithm favors posts from individual profiles rather than pages. Now, there’s an answer. Facebook has created a feed where users can see only the posts from Pages they like. In addition to making up about 20 percent of news feed content, users can look at their very own Pages-only view any time.

So is that good news, or bad?

The answer is mixed, but mostly good. Unlike the other newsfeed views, “most recent” and “top stories,” users have to look for Pages updates in the Pages tab in the left hand navigation bar. It’s not the most obvious integration for most; after all, how many people spend time in their Pages menu?

However, once alerted to the change, the Pages feed offers a great resource for people looking for updates from their favorite brands, bands, businesses, and celebrities. Posts that were once buried by Edge Rank are available to be uncovered with ease — all the more important during the time of year when consumers are looking for holiday shopping deals or recipe ideas, for example.

ReadWriteWeb suggests another plus: Brand-weary consumers may stick to Facebook if they don’t feel they’re getting a lot of unwanted advertising shown to them all the time. They point out that a U.K. poll from the summer shows people like multiple pages but hide them from their news feed. With Facebook’s new model, maybe users get a better deal. Facebook fans now have  a way to maintain valuable connections on their own terms.

Have you tried the Pages view? What do you think? Is it helping you connect to people and products you don’t often see in your news feed?

TIP: Let fans know they can ensure updates from your Page by alerting them to the “Get Notifications” option. Users can hover over the “Liked” button on a favorite page and then click “Get Notifications” to get updates similar to those from close friends.

It started simply. The most basic example is Facebook, which surfaces the most relevant content and information from friends and contacts. Not too long ago, Twitter revamped its Discovery tab and ’Who to Follow’ recommendations in an attempt to serve more relevant stories and other links on its platform.

Lots of commerce sites include a social feature, letting shoppers know what friends have purchased or recommended. Other commerce sites have enlisted the help of celebrities and industry influencers to curate or even create collections of goods and promote them accordingly, a la Rachel Zoe on Piperlime, or Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen on StyleMint.

Some applications and products even go a step past recommendation, straight to authoritative delivery. For example, Soundrop is an application from SoundCloud that uses Spotify, allowing users to build and play social playlists. And for people (like me) who spend a solid portion of the day listening to music while working, lists of well-curated music are an easy way to get an hours-long soundtrack. This means that by listening to a socially curated list, you might not even know what you’re listening to — just where you’re listening to it. It’s sort of like listening to a movie soundtrack. While soundtracks are curated by a professional, these playlists are curated by friends and connections you trust. They work so well, that occasionally when asked, “What music are you listening to?” the answer is now, “Where are you listening to music?”

The same applies to shopping and purchasing decisions. Birchbox will send you a monthly shipment of beauty product samples. Stitchfix sends clothes tailored to your style. Wittlebee sends clothes tailored to your toddler’s style. If there were a service that sent my clothing recommendations culled from my best friends’ Svpply and Pinterest feeds, I’d probably take it!

Social recommendations are becoming an increasingly important way of doing business. So much so, that successful companies, products, and apps are iterating on the idea, introducing consumers and audiences into an environment where they are guided by these recommendations — often without realizing it. It goes right past understanding your audience, straight to serving them in the most personalized way possible.

If you run a website, you know how important search engine rankings can be. Getting your site on the first page of Google can bring in widespread awareness of your cause/product/service, or an influx of new customers. 

There’s more to a high Google ranking than just optimizing your website for certain keywords. Social media can both really help or really hurt your your ranking, according to TastyPlacement, who have done a little testing to see how much Google+, Facebook, and Twitter actually affect search results.

In a nutshell, TastyPlacement created six websites based in six US cities. They let them be for ten months, and then began testing various social networks for each site, focusing on the following for five of the websites:

• Twitter followers
• Tweets and retweets
• Facebook shares and likes
• Followers to the site’s Google+ business page
• Google +1 votes to the homepage

(The sixth site was left as-is for a control test.)

They promoted these websites using the particular social network chosen for one month, and then measured how each site’s search engine ranking changed for a set of keywords.

So how did social media influence the search results?

Overall, the websites’ search rankings changed by between a fall of 1.22 to a rise of 14.63. So, social media does affect search results.

Google’s own properties yielded the best results by far (let the conspiracy theories roll through…)

The website that was linked to a Google+ business page saw a full 14.63 rise in its search position, while the website that had a Google+ +1 button rose 9.44.

And these stellar results, sadly, did not translate to Twitter. Targeting tweets and retweets only got the website a 2.88 rise in Google’s search results, and procuring 1,000 additional Twitter followers actually caused another site’s position to fall by 1.22. (Didn’t Google try to buy Twitter a while ago? May more conspiracy theories roll through..)