In recent news, Google has just announced their acquisition of PostRank. The amount Google purchased the company for was not disclosed but we can assume there were plenty of ZERO’s on the check.

So For those of you that don’t know:

PostRank, is an analytics platform that aggregates social media data. To quote the PostRank website:

“Our Platform tracks where and how users engage, and what they pay attention to – in REAL time.”

Post Rank social engagement data measures actual user activity, the most accurate indicator of the relevance and influence of a site, story, or author.”

So basically…what they are saying is they have done what Google has been trying to do for some time now by leveraging the power of social media to determine popularity of a brand, product, or person.

Now as from an SEO perspective this is interesting.

For one, we can surely see how this falls in line with Google's desire to become more social in their algorithm.

Having a system that can pull in all the pertinent data from Facebook and twitter to develop trends, user sentiment on a product, and overall popularity is what they have been striving for some time. And now they are closer to achieving this goal.

I think this is win/win/win for all parties involved. Including all of us as marketers.

For one, Google is going to gain access to Post Rank’s kick-ass analytics platform.

Which in turn will trickle down to us webmasters that can be used in our own marketing campaigns.

Its reported that users will gain much better competitive landscape data, as well as be able to tie their returns on investment a bit better on their social campaigns. No to mention all the cool stuff that Google will bring to the table and add on to this technology moving forward.

So, if you have been holding off on allocating budget to social because you cant see the ROI..perhaps this is the time.