Google Makes Search Personal, If you haven't already heard, then the big news this week is Google fusing Google+ into their search results with 'Search, Plus Your World.' The roll out began on the 10th of January; however it is only for those signed into Google.com and searching in English.
In a nutshell Google search results are going to be automatically personalised for each user, these results will then show alongside 'normal' search results.
Let's go a little deeper – What exactly is 'Search Plus Your World?'
As social media starts taking over, Google feel it's no longer enough to just search content, 'You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they've shared with you, as well as the people you don't know but might want to... all from one search box."(Amit Singhal, Google)
Personal Results
Your search will now draw on results from your own behaviour, social connections and content shared with you on Google+ network, and will bring in results from your friends, yourself or things that have been shared with or by you. Google will also pull in photos shared on Picasa or Google+. They will however still only be visible to you.
The personalised results include:
• Listings from the web
• Listings from the web, boosted because of your personal behaviour
• Listings from the web, boosted because of your social connections
• 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
Profiles in Search
Searching for people on Google can be difficult, especially for common names. With the new update, searching for someone's name will pull in Google+ profiles into a personal search, along with content from the Web associated with that person. Google will use your social signals to find out which Matt Smith is the one you know.
Some concerns here are, that Google+ will bring up personal profiles ahead of personal websites and users will also be unable to control what comes up when there name is Googled.
People and Pages
To help continue their social search push, Google have included a feature which brings the communities behind a search query together. So, if you search for a topic like Music, or Basketball you will see prominent people who discuss these topics frequently on Google+ on the right side of the results page. You can then connect with them and add them to your Circles. It gives you the chance to discover huge communities that weren't possible before.
This might not sound like a big deal to many of you, but it is potentially just the start of things to come, Google is soon going to be controlling much more than just search. Google, however defend themselves by saying you can switch back to global mode and boom, you'll see no more social stuff.
Implications
There are a number of issues and concerns from those in the industry at what the impact this new feature will have on the current social platforms and the implications on SEO.
"Search Plus Your World" would be better described as "Search Plus Google+" (Econsultancy)
Many see this as a chance for Google to favour their own content and push signups for Google+ accounts; they want to make its social network more prominent and grow their user base.
Currently Facebook and other social platforms won't come up in the new personalised searches. Filtering out these other social networks seems to be going against everything Google stand for, if they're filtering out links that compete with their own product. Google argue that even if they want to do this, they can't. These networks don't allow Google to 'crawl' their sites and store information, so items you have shared on Facebook or Twitter etc can't appear on your Google searches.
SignUps
People don't want to sign up, they have to.
"I joined Google Plus not because I wanted to participate, not to take a look around, but because I perceived that Google would grant my site preferred placement — more algorithmic traffic — if I linked my Google Plus account to my web site and online publications. So Google can force users to join Google Plus to avoid receiving, or expecting to receive, lower algorithmic search ranking." (Edelman, Harvard)
Search Results and Communities
When signed into your Google+ account it gives Google the chance to learn all about you, they'll be able to view everything you search for, who you interact with and then use this data together with existing ranking factors.
This could mean that there will be a shift in SERP's to content producers with an active audience, in places where communities exist in the network.
For example, in the social media niche, sites such as Mashable Social Media Explorer and Social Media Today will receive extra prominence in SERPs because they have an audience containing not only the 'influencers' but also the remaining mass of social media enthusiasts who share their content. The social media sites that don't have an active audience or community will lose prominence.
If Google+ does give prominence to sites with an audience and community, will you need to put emphasis on getting your brand/organisation a Google+ page and building a community here, as many already do on Facebook?
An SEO Split?
As Google+ heads toward the 100 Million users mark (if users are logged in) the 'normal' search results they will see, will actually be personalised.
Personalised results may start to be seen as the norm, and non-personalised might not. At the moment logged in searches still make up a very very small part of searches overall but as more and more Google devices and services require a google account this may change.
Whether this happens or not SEO strategies will need to cater for this change.
More $$$'s for Google
As the new feature will restructure the layout and format of traditional SERP's, boosting personalised results will impact on those paying for pay per click ads. In order to still try and appear highly on SERP's, businesses may increase their PPC budgets which just means more $$$'s for Google.
Research by Nielsen suggests that 42% of people trust search results, but 90% trust recommendations from friends, so is Google+ just improving the quality of search results through increased trustworthiness?
What do we think?
I have mixed views. On a personal level I don't want to use a Google+ account and to be honest I'm too busy on Facebook and Twitter to try socialising on there too. I also don't particularly want my results personalised, if I'm searching on Google, it's to obtain new information from new sources. I don't really want to sift through personal results first to find what I'm looking for and I don't want Google controlling my world.
On a professional note I think it necessitates business and search marketers to engage in Google+ - not because of the value of Google plus, but because it becomes an important ranking factor. Fortunately it will only affect small % of Google searches – for now.
It is also another blurring of the line between social media and search – where one stars and the other finishes is not clear anymore.
Google Makes Search Personal
