Are you ready for Social Engine Optimization?
Google just launched "Search Plus Your World" which will finally test the mettle of Google's now 62 million strong social network. Google+'s three new features will improve user experience and help connect G+ users to their social networking pages. Google's broadening its reach in the social web by harnessing its own social graph, and this means your content, photos, and posts will be integrated into search. Obviously, this signals Google's initiative for Social SEO which Facebook or Twitter has yet to realize.
As the world becomes more social, real-time news and user-generated content (UGC) is more crucial than ever. As we all know Google puts a premium on quality and relevant content. Google+'s new features blends relevance, functionality, and real-time UGC not only for users but local businesses as well. Furthermore, Google emphasizes that these features make up "Your Web", which suggests that aside from available public content from Google, a Google+ user will be able to view content made available by your Google+ Circles.
The Search Plus Your World initiative starts by releasing three new features for Google+ users, namely:
- The feature's name says it all - personalized content that you can view on your results page. Google+ posts from YouTube, Picasa etc. that you and your Circles share will be more visible when you search them via Google.
- An interesting feature that enables a user easily find people like celebrities and people from your industry that you might want to add to your Circles.
- This feature allows a user to view Google+ pages and G+ user profiles related to a particular area of interest with just a click.
Here's a creative video from Google that shows Google+'s new features:
With the release of social-friendly features, Google+ is making search more social and vice versa. I like the statement that Google made in its blog post "Behind most every query is a community", nothing can be more true than this. Before social media platforms conquered the Web, forums brought people together through a common interest or query. It's only fitting that Google bring relevant and quality content to the social web by integrating Google+ to its search engine results that users will appreciate and consider useful. Though Google+'s success remains to be seen, it certainly is showing a lot of promise.