Huge news broke on Tuesday 10th January when Google announced the roll out of its integration of social network Google+ into Google Search. This is the culmination of months of work, and a final decision to cement their belief in social signals being the best upgrade to its algorithm to help us all find the information that we need in the future.
Danny Sullivan wrote a typically excellent blog post on Search Engine Land explaining all the detail.
For brands this underlines the fact that yes, a Google+ brand page is essential. It also underlines how important it is for marketers to now ensure sharing becomes a much more central part of any online acquisition strategy.
We've had personalised results for some time now - prominence given to sites we have visited before but now they will be joined by sites that either we have liked or people within our network (on Google+) have liked. Interestingly we will also get the following:
- Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos (all of which are also listings from the web)
- Private or Limited Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you
The latter is interesting for those of us in the content marketing game as we know how important it has become to have the old +1 button on our content, and now more than ever great content is the key to spreading your message.
For now its only Google's own social network results that are featured, and I for one can't see Twitter or Facebook ever coming to the party. It's inevitable that there are complaints, but just because Google is doing a little bit of what Yahoo, Lycos & Alta Vista did back in the day with their portals (and in a much much more useful way) doesn't mean that there's a monopoly. One would argue that they already had that by just providing a great user experience.
What is important to note is that this update (as it's being called) marks a huge shift for Google away from its pure drive to take people through to everyone else's content as naturally as possible to now start to keep people within its own network. This is something covered in another post by Danny: Search Engines Should Be Like Santa From Miracle On 34th Street.
I for one think this is search nirvana! Not only do we have the cleanest, quickest and largest set of results available but we now have recommendations by people we (should) trust overlayed. Google is truly becoming a personal knowledge management tool, and personally
I cant wait! And don't forget that this backs up the stat that recommendations from friends (90% trust) far outweigh search results (41%).
If you have a Google account you can already see Search Plus Your World in action if you log in to Google.com and then search.