If your business or website doesn't have a Google+ account yet, you'd better get on it ASAP. Google recently announced a tweak to Search that will bring up results based on your search query as usual, but will also offer results based on your Google+ relationships and social shares. Called Search Plus Your World, searching on Google will now bring up:
- Personal Results — Find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page.
- Profiles which appear in Search — Both through autocomplete and normal search results, which allow you to find people immediately that you’re close to looking for or might actually not realize and be interested in following.
- Pages and People — This helps you now find profiles of people and Google pages which are related to topics of interest based on certain search criteria. This ease of result now allows you to find, follow and learn more about then in a few clicks.
What does this mean for your biz? Let's say you're a consumer tech website, and you have a Google+ page that has been circled by thousands of readers. Let's say then, that those readers are searching for the best iPhone case. Google will recognize that they have the tech website in a Google+ circle and determine that results from it will be more relevant, and bring those up first. You'll see that while the website may not rank on page one for iPhone Cases, because I have liked a post from the site or in my Google+ circles, I'll get those results up top.
You can turn off the feature (by toggling back and forth between Search Plus Your World and just Search results), but for those who have the feature activated, results from trusted sources, friends, and circles will take priority.
