If there's been one thing that tends to get me going, it's when people in the industry start talking about social signals. In particular, Google using them as a ranking factor. Is this truly the case? Or do a lot of folks have it wrong? Or is the answer a bit more complex? That's what we'll get into today. For starters, let's get the easy bits out of the way. Most social websites of consequence use the nofollow attribute. This means that the traditional PageRank approach to scoring is a non-starter. Yes, there are those that believe Google is selective in how they treat NF links, I am certainly not one of them. Personalization t always the same as a ranking factor. Google has said, (in late 2010), in regards to retweets:…