One popular Google search term I’ve noticed since I began adding Tumblr-related material to this blog is: “How do I delete all my Tumblr Likes?”. Depending on why people are using the ‘Like’ function on Tumblr, I can kind of see how this question might arise. Some people do use the ‘Like’ button purely to get attention (on blogs in general – not just Tumblr), and since to a greater or lesser extent the ploy usually works, that’s no surprise. But sooner or later the realisation dawns… “OMG! I’ve ‘Liked’ about 2,000 posts I haven’t even read! It’s almost certain I’ll have digitally endorsed lots of things I don’t agree with… and my username and profile pic are now there on all those blogs, showing my support, for anyone and everyone to see!… Those ‘Likes’ are no longer serving any purpose for me, so why don’t I just delete them all?”
Well, I’m going to answer that question. There’s a good reason why you shouldn’t delete your Tumblr ‘Likes’. You may not realise it, but those ‘Likes’ do benefit you more than they benefit the people you’ve ‘Liked’.
HOW DO TUMBLR 'LIKES' HELP THE 'LIKER'?
In giving you a ‘Like’ button, Tumblr is doing you a favour. Not only does the Like button allow you to get other users’ attention in the short term – it also helps optimise your blog for a better presence on the search engines in the long term. That’s because each time you click the Tumblr ‘Like’ button, you get what’s called a backlink. A backlink is simply a link from another page on the Web, which points to your blog. And when you click ‘Like’ on Tumblr, that’s precisely what you get. The site automatically places a link to your blog on someone else’s page. The more posts you ‘Like’, the more links (or backlinks) you’ll have pointing to your blog.
People rarely actually click these internal links which are littered around blogging platforms, so a lot of users think it’s pointless having them there. But they do matter, in that Google uses backlinks to assess the importance and relevance of a site or page.
Long ago, Google came up with a system called Page Rank, which aimed to give the more popular sites greater visibility on the search engines than the less popular sites. That way, people using Google for search should most often get the best quality (most popular) content right at the top, on the first page of results. One of the key features of popular sites was that they’d have a large number of links pointing to them from other pages across the Web. That's logical: when people find something interesting, or funny, or useful, they frequently link to it. So the Google system awarded higher status (or Page Rank) to sites with large numbers of backlinks, on the assumption that these sites would be the most popular.
Obviously, that’s a very simplistic vision, and over time Google has refined and sophisticated the system. Google knows, for instance, that some links are just spam, so it’s not just a matter of how many incoming links a site has – it also matters, among other things, where those links are. One link pointing to your page from a really important, powerful site with a high reputation, might have more value alone than, say, five thousand internal backlinks on Tumblr. So ‘Liking’ thousands of posts can't really be considered an easy or even a likely way to get your Tumblr blog found on Google.
BUT, if you’ve already ‘Liked’ thousands, or hundreds of Tumblr posts, the backlinks those ‘Likes’ have created will be part of the overall impression Google has of you blog’s status. So if you then start deleting those ‘Likes’, the backlinks will be deleted with them, and it’s going to look to Google like your blog is getting less popular. Depending on the number of ‘Likes’ you delete, it could even look to the search engines like there’s a serious problem with your blog. And the last thing search engines will want to be highlighting is a blog with serious problems. Of course, it's ironic that when you 'Like' someone else's post, the Google system potentially attributes the popularity to you, but that's the genius of these blogging platforms. In the end, not enough people care about the work of others. If the blog hosts don't make it worth your while to 'Like' other posts (thus motivating other users to stay active), then chances are you're not going to do it.
In my own experience with blogs on various platforms, deleting backlinks in significant number does have a negative effect on visitor traffic, even if the backlinks are not particularly powerful in themselves.
Of course, every Tumblr blog is different. Many have very little presence on Google because they’re not well search-optimised in terms of text, image labelling, etc, and, very specifically, because a lot of Tumblr blogs don't have much original content. But if you do put a reasonable amount of original material onto Tumblr, you will have the potential to gain visibility on Google - as I explained in my Tumblr SEO and Getting Tumblr Photos onto Google articles. The free Google Analytics utility can be used to monitor Tumblr stats, and determine how much traffic a blog gets from Google and the other search engines. It's not exactly a breeze to add or to use, but it's there if you're sufficiently curious.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE LIKES I SHOULDN’T HAVE GIVEN?
Obviously, if you do find you’ve ‘Liked’ something you really don’t feel comfortable endorsing, or the user you’ve liked creeps you out or whatever, it’s best to delete that ‘Like’. But the message here is really to be more careful with what you ‘Like’ in the first place, so you don’t end up in that situation. It’s also worth considering that most posts on Tumblr are very transient in their Web visibility. Unless the posts have gone really viral or been very well optimised for the search engines, two or three months after posting they’ll probably be buried so deep beneath the unending debris of other material, that no one will see them anyway. In most cases, even when the posts do get found, it’ll be a miracle if the viewer notices the notes, let alone reads through them to see who ‘Liked’ the post.
Deleting one or two ‘Likes’ you wish you hadn’t given should not do any harm. But I would strongly recommend that you don’t literally ‘Unlike’ however many hundreds or thousands of Tumblr posts you’ve ever 'Liked'. Ultimately, the 'Like' button is there to help you. It might give the people you ‘Like’ an ego boost, but it doesn’t help them in any practical sense. When you click the Tumblr ‘Like’ button, the person who gets all of the practical benefits, is you.
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