How Your Business Can Best Benefit from New Google Changes

by    |   18th Jan 12 2:58 am   |   4

home4 300x161 How Your Business Can Best Benefit from New Google ChangesIt’s been an eventful start to the year 2012 for Google. The online search giant’s announcement to introduce tighter integration between its Google+ social network and its organic search results has attracted severe criticism from experts, users and other relevant voices of social media.

On its part, Google says that the motivation of including Google+ in search was to “transform Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.” So, essentially Google+ data as part your Google searches is Google Search Plus. The idea of Search Plus is in-line with Google’s long-term vision to personalize your results by including more Google+ profiles, business pages, posts, and Google+ and Picasa Photos.

While some of the criticism around Google Search Plus is understandable, we should realize there’s no looking back and therefore I’ll focus on how your business can leverage Google Search Plus.

How does Google Search Plus work?

Google Search plus Your World results will introduce the following 3 categories of results – personal results, profiles in search, and profiles and pages. Personal results include data from your own Google+ photos and posts, as well as any sharable Google+ data from people in your circles including non-public Google+ photos and posts that were shared with you or posts you shared with a select group of people.

From an individual perspective, there’s definitely some amount of learning curve required to understand how Google Search Plus works and what public/ non-public data would be show up in search results.

Platform

Google has always maintained that Google+ is not a social network. On the contrary, it’s always projected itself as a platform. As I mentioned back then, I’ve strong admiration for Google as a technology company mainly because of its robust and scalable ecosystem. Google was never a search-only company, instead it focused on building a platform and search was just the first, and one piece of the whole puzzle. It’s understandable that Google is now bringing all its ecosystem goodness to Google+ in the form of Google Apps, Hangouts and the newly introduced Google+ updates in search results.

IMO, Google Search Plus is just the beginning of Google’s broader plan to integrate search, social media and SEO. From a business perspective, it opens up a new opportunity to leverage Google+ profiles for search as well as SEO.

SEO Factor

SEO is a key consideration for businesses. Google’s own services have always ranked high in search and SEO. These include Google Checkout, Google Book Search, Google Maps etc. With Google Search Plus, Google is now bringing Google+ into the SEO and Page Rank game. While Google hasn’t disclosed the algorithmic details, one thing’s for sure – popular Google+ profiles can help businesses up their SEO rankings.

Customer Perspective

It’s an encouraging sign for businesses that several customers have actually found Google Search Plus to be useful to see if someone in their circles searched for the same stuff. If that’s products or services which they recently bought, it shows up in the search results and this would help businesses with passive promotion.

The best part – if people don’t like Google Search Plus, they can turn it off so it’s not like Facebook enforcing you to follow its mindless privacy changes.

Of course, it’s still early days. Despite all the criticism, I see plenty of business positives of Google Search Plus. What about you? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

Douglas Idugboe, Digital and New Media Marketing Strategist. Founder and Chief Editor of Smedio! A Canadian Bestselling Author, Marketing Strategist, Speaker and Trainer, Who Loves Technology
  • http://www.jonnyross.com/ Jonny Ross

    Hi Douglas,

    I agree entirely, businesses need to get on there, this is important and can literally shape your ranks, all sites should have a +1 button installed and google+ should be made as important if not more important than FB and Twitter!

    Jonny

  • http://twitter.com/UshaSliva UshaSliva

    Hi, I’ve been on Google Plus for a bit now, but haven’t really used it. Thanks for sharing this -will give it some more thought. I find despite using tools like hootsuite, it’s hard to keep up with social channels.

  • http://angelaneal.com Sparklyscotty

    While I agree that businesses have to get on Google+,  I am personally disappointed that Google is becoming less and less objective and egalitarian in it’s results.

    “The best part – if people don’t like Google Search Plus, they can turn it off”   however most people won’t even realize that anything has changed, let alone the difference between the results.

  • http://researchpapermonster.com research papers

    Great info!