Google’s New “Search, Plus Your World” And What It Means For Your SEO Campaign
What Is “Search, Plus Your World”?
We already know from Gmail advertisements that Google watches our every move.
Now, Google is inviting us to check out Search, Plus Your World, which tracks your actions to provide a more personalized search experience. If you are already using Google’s social network, Google+, your search results will automatically be personalized while signed in. If not, you can upgrade to Google+ to get this search experience.
Google’s personalized search uses your web history – what you ended up clicking on and where you spent the most time – to place your previous search results higher up the next time you go searching. Google notes that “searches completed while Web History is paused won’t influence your search results.”
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However, Google still allows you to switch on and off your personalized results.
This Icon In The Upper Right Hand Corner Means That You Are Viewing Personal Results
This Icon Means That Personal Results Are Hidden
So far, however, people aren’t reporting drastic changes between their general and personal search results unless they have done some serious Google research on a topic in the past. The one big difference is the appearance of Google+ results in the SERPs.
How Can I Leverage My Google + Account For SEO?
Simple – do what you can to get more +1’s. Google+ is no doubt Google’s push to stake its claim in the online world of social networking. But it’s also a way Google can rank your site based on user-generated content.
It’s time to get on board the Google+ train for the sake of your company’s ranking within the organic search results. SEOMoz CEO Rand Fishkin and some other SEO geeks recently tried an experiment where they asked lots of people to +1 a site. They successfully got the site from 16th rank to 6th in no time. (Drag your mouse immediately to the right of a url in the Google SERPs to see the +1 button appear.)
Remember, Google owns the search market, and they have the control over how Google+ will influence the results. And so far, it looks like they are placing a good bit of importance on their social network in the SERPs.
Google+ In Search Results- The blogosphere is lighting up with instances of Google placing Google+ results over relevancy in the organic search results pages. Check out this post from Search Engine Land for some examples.
Others are simply remarking that they’ve noticed a lot more Google+ results appearing from people they’ve put in their “circles” in their organic search results. Not surprising considering that Google said “relevant Google+ posts and comments that have been shared with you will now appear in your search results.” What does this mean? Type in your friend’s name and you’ll actually get the “John Doe” that you know, not some other guy. Images search will also include pictures from your friends and Picasa albums.
Google+1 For Human Relevance – Google+ could help Google overcome a big obstacle in the current search algorithm. It has been trying to develop a crawl bot that can determine the relevance and quality of a website. The Google+1 button allows users to do that work for them.
Instead of relying solely on keywords and backlinks, humans can tell Google which sites are most important with the single click of a button.
So, what to do? Get a Google +1 Button on your website landing pages. Try to post interesting content on your Google+ page to get others to +1 you. Make +1 profile connections by adding people to your “circles.”
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The Klik Marketing Blog is your source for Charlotte SEO and Small Business topics. It is written by Klik Marketing founder and President Eric Fransen. Eric has been involved with the Internet Marketing industry since the late 1990’s.
