Mediarun Search Marketing News

Google Gets Personal

By Matthew Kynaston

January 13th 2012

Search Engine Optimisation News

A new year with a new search engine! Earlier this week Google rolled out its “Search Plus Your World” format. Affective only on English searchers using google.com (not .co.uk yet) search results will display content that you have shared personally and privately, as well as standard public results in one list.

Private Content

The first conculsion many will jump to is that Google will be sharing your private information, this is not true. It will simply be that content that you (or your friends) share on Google + appears in your results. Basically it is content that you already have access to, you may just have overlooked it or missed it on your Stream.

Personalisation:

This shouldn’t come as such a surprise for users; Google have been focussing on personalising search for many years now. So as well as seeing the standard results from the web, SERPS will display:

Results manipulated by your own personal behaviour
Results manipulated by your Google+ connections (circles)
Public posts from Google+ and Google Picasa photos
“Limited” Google+/ Picasa posts and photos shared with you.

Have a look at our example:

As you can see the first results are all personalised, with a marker next to the results showing this. At the top of the SERP there is an option so that I see all and only personalised results.

Implications

This is a double move for Google. It is a large step toward their goal of personalising content for each user, making results as relevant for them as possible. Secondly, it is another way of reminding Google account holders of Google+ (should they have chosen to ignore it). Socialising search was always on the Google search agenda since the launch of their social media. Needless to say, Facebook and Twitter results will not appear on personalised results, yet.

Google+ profiles have now totally replaced the company website, even in the quick link pre search results.

Remember the story on encrypted search results? Well this is why. Results that have been manipulated by personally inspired searches are not displayed to advertisers, maintaining privacy.

Good for Business

One huge implication of this story is that if you had not set up a business page on Google+, now would be the time to do it. In terms of SEO, getting your posts onto your friends (customers) results, personally, this can only be good thing. It seems that if your company website is likely to drop out of the personalised results, then at least your Google+ page can prosper.

To find out about the performance solution we can offer you and your business, speak to one of our consultants on +44 (0)8009 550 176 or contact us.