Image via CrunchBase

One of the biggest fears held by most website owners is that any small mistake they make in producing their content or interacting their users will immediately lead to precipitous drop in their ranking at major search engines like Google. And, while it's responsible to avoid these pitfalls and mistakes altogether, it's worth noting that an immediate and mind-blowing drop at the internet's search leader is simply not likely in many cases. Such a theory was proved correct by an SEO firm which recently decided to deliberately destroy a reputable website's search engine rankings. As part of its project to make a first-page result into a last-page afterthought, the company loaded that website up with more than 50,000 undesirable links. This included forum posts, blog comment links, and other links placed into the sidebar for the sole effect of destroying the site's reputation.

Image via CrunchBase

During recent years in field of search optimization, there has been a push for SEO strategies to incorporate what is known as social media optimization. Older, more established companies that still go the way of the dinosaur will say that there's no verifiable impact because most social media provides links that are "nofollow" Though it was a relatively small test, the data behind this infographic shows otherwise.

We at TastyPlacement, Inc. decided to conduct a test of six similarly situated websites. While the results are not concrete, the tendencies that each nearly identical website displayed are signs that are trustworthy enough which to take note.

In fact, the results make sense once you take a look at each of them. It makes sense that Google, no matter how sophisticated its algorithms may ever be, will find that the most reliable search results are those which people manually "approve". The basis for Google Plus activity affecting search engine ranking therefore make sense, as does the amount of Google Followers, Facebook promotion and even Twitter tweets.