In 2012, Google launched a new service – more like a new style – of searching for Google+ users. Google refers to the service as “Search, plus Your World”. Most people, however, simply refer to it as “Social Search”. Take a look at the following video by Google to get a run down of how the product works:
Let’s take a quick look at one of the more over-saturated keywords on Google. Because everyone thinks they are a WordPress Expert, if you were to Google WordPress Expert without being logged into a Google account with Google+ (or Social Search) enabled, you’d see typical results from big names such as WordPress.org and WPMUdev.org:
This is typical and can be expected; however, if you are currently friends with me on Google Plus, you’ll see that I have my personal website +1’d on Google+. This is me vouching that my content is quality, and since you are my friend, you’d rather see what I say is quality vs. what a computer says is probably quality. Anyone currently friends with me on Google+ will see a link to my website under the keyword WordPress Expert on page 1 as shown below:
You can tell it’s a social search result by the little human icon standing next to the search result. It’ll also show you under the post why this result is showing in your social results: notice how in my example it says Mick Olinik shared this. This way, you can gauge how much you’d like to listen to the potential advice of your friends.
As a website owner, it’s easy to see where this might be a powerful tool for marketing and drawing traffic to your website. Google social search is not only a way to limit the potential abuse of BlackHat SEOs, but it’s also a way for you as a website owner to draw targeted traffic from your personal circles to your website. This allows you to create highly targeted traffic that has a higher chance of converting rather than being a random individual from a foreign country that “by chance” found your URL in a web result.
To learn more how to use Social Search best on your website, stay tuned.