Search Plus Your World: Google Is Going Social - Big Time!

Wednesday Jan 11th 2012, Posted by: Ryan Mattock (0 comments)

For years Google have been toying with the idea of creating the world’s largest social network. Do you remember Orkut? or how about Google Buzz? These were both stand alone platforms which were at one point invitation only. So how do you set out to conquer the mighty Facebook? Well, if Google is the portal to the web and so many people begin their journey at the Google search bar (even to navigate to Facebook), then why not slowly turn search social? In fact, so social that one day you might not need to conduct your searches in one place, and carry out your social networking somewhere else (Facebook). Check out this video which demonstrates how Google are merging ‘Search’ and ‘Social’:

On Tuesday, Google added a number of new ‘social’ features to it’s search results. They call this Search Plus Your World. These features include:

Personalised search results

Conducting a search now allows you to find information personal to you and your friends. Photo’s, updates and shared content will be displayed by anyone in your Google+ circles.

Search Results Display Google+ Profiles

Alongside the organic search results, Google+ profiles of people you may know or be interested in adding to your circles will return along with your search results. These profiles may be from someone who ‘+1’ed your content or even a friend of a friend, just in the same way that Facebook displays comments made by one of your friends on a status update or picture of a person who you may not already know. Google+ pages will also be appearing on the right hand side of the SERP’s but will in no way be replacing PPC ads.

Being signed into Google+ means you can also add people and brands to your circles directly within the search results.

You Don’t Have to See Personalised Search if You Don’t Want To

If personalised search isn’t for you, then Google don’t want to scare you away and gives the option of seeing only ‘traditional’ search results. This can be easily toggled on and off from the search page.

So What Does Social Search Mean For SEO?

At National Positions we have known for a while now that Google+ is going to be big for business. Think of it as an extension of your existing SEO campaign. 2012 is the year for stepping up your online presence and being as ‘social’ as you possibly can. Google are making it very clear that fresh, social content is the winning combination. Ensure you have an optimised Google+ business profile and run as much optimised content through it as possible.

Don’t forget your local customers! Make sure your Google Places Page is fully optimised and is being populated with loads of positive 4 and 5 star customer reviews. If you need help with this we have a great new product called Positive Reviews Pro which we will go into more depth about in a forthcoming post.

What it comes down to is this; Google+ means better rankings and more leads. If you’re not keeping up with Google, you will fall behind. If your competitors are being social and have a Google+ page and you don’t then you will lose out to them. A good SEO company can help you with all of your internet marketing requirements to keep you one step ahead of the game.