Social Search Results from Google Plus

Google+ Your World

When Google Plus first arrived on the scene, I felt a sudden hesitation to sign up for the "newer and improved" social network because like most people I felt like it would be another mobile app I would need to manage like Twitter or Facebook.  Six months after my sign up, Goolge Plus is dishing out what tastes like another slice of the fruitful pie that Google loves to give out to its users.  The slices are socialized search results for a Google Plus user and it exhibits every indication of being a game changer.

In the past couple of weeks, Google began to immediately index content for Google Plus users.  Why does this create relevance?  If I were to initiate a search not only will I receive the usual search results, but I also receive personalized search results and I can choose to separately toggle between them.  The image below depicts both scenarios.  The upper image shows the general search query result and the bottom image displays the personalized and social search for a Google Plus user.

The search query for "web design" yielded common search results form the web, but my personalized search result yielded results from Google Plus and the web together.  The personalized social search result populated content, images, and posts not only from my business website (which offers web design services) and Google Plus posts, but also from my extended network of Google Plus friends and their networks.

Is it a Game Changer?

To the everyday internet user Google Plus may be just another social network, but to the internet marketer, SEO expert, web developer, and average business owner Google Plus is so much more.  With the indexing of content immediately to the Google Searchable Index, business owners don't need to spend a fortune on traditional or web marketing to become relevant on the real-time web.  They need to spend more time on Google Plus building their networks and creating content on their Google Plus Pages that will bolster their relevance on the web for social search results to their extended networks.  As long as Google does not change their stance on how these social search results are indexed and queried, then it will create tremendous value for anyone who is not a web developer but who wants to get noticed on the web and become relevant today.

Internet marketers, SEO experts, and web developers may have a totally different experience with Google Plus than the average business owner.  For anyone in the field of search engine optimization, Google Plus could either prove to be an extra boost.  If Google tweaks the algorithm for social search in the same manner in which it created the rules for SEO, then businesses in the SEO Services Market will get a real  boost from new network. The reason being that keywords, content, and links on a traditional website typically generate relevance and page rank for web pages AND most of the social results from Google Plus users will typically come from web pages, shared links, or blogs associated with the Google Plus user's POSTS, not from Google Plus profiles themselves.

So what does that mean?  Well, web pages and websites which are being referenced or Plus +1ed will inherently gain more relevance than website or a web page which is just sitting there without social engagement or interaction. However, the content, keywords, and links in those websites or blogs may help to form the hierarchy behind the social search results as a whole.  So as long as the traditional sites are coded with SEO keywords, content, and links correctly- the social search results will yield a far better result than the traditional search query for the information seeker.  In the long run, Google Plus doesn't make  SEO experts obsolete, it makes them more necessary.

As long as Google Plus Users are adding content which refers back to the traditional web, it will make websites which already have hard coded SEO keywords, content, and links even more relevant than before social search.  Will this boost traditional organic search query results or will Google make social search the next stage in searchable content on the web?  The answer to that question is best left to the Google Search Engine Engineers.