There’s a great deal of hooplah online right now about the new Google “Search plus Your World” implementation that adds personalized search (with Google+ content front-and-center) as the default view for most searcher’s SERPs.
Almost all of the focus has (naturally) been on the heavy Google+ presence in the new personal search. But what many might be missing is that Google+ was already having a strong influence on the “pure” Google results…and it still is.
Here’s an example that just happened to me today.
This morning I put on Google+ a post titled “All My Google+ Guides in One Post.” A short while later it was shared by Google+ user +Denis Labelle, resulting in at least 56 known re-shares (see the “ripples” of that post). Denis Labelle is followed (“circled” in Google+ parlance) by 37,820 people, and is ranked 498th of all Google+ users by circlecount.com.
At 4:30 this afternoon, here’s what the Google results for “google+ guides” looked like for me, logged in to Google+ and in the personal search view:
You can see that Denis’s post sharing my post is in the #2 position.
But next I searched the same phrase (“google+ guides”) in a different browser, not logged in to Google. And this is what I got:
Notice that Denis’s post from Google+ is still in the #2 position (the top item is an ad).
Conclusion: Google+ has a lot of oomph in Google search results, even with the new personal search turned off. If you are a content producer and are on Google+, and you’ve been following my guidelines, and you’ve been building a good network that includes powerful influencers like Denis Labelle, you already know that Google+ needs to be a major part of your SEO and marketing strategy now!
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Want to take advantage of the new social-SEO revolution? Virante , already a leader in the SEO industry, is uniquely positioned to enable you to do so. We’ve been on Google+ since it’s first week, and we’ve been intensely testing and studying the best methods to get your business noticed, on Google+, search, and throughout the social web. Our contact info is in the sidebar. Let us know how we can help get you noticed!
For more great insights on Google+ and social media marketing in general, follow author Mark Traphagen on Google+.
