As search and social become ever more entwined in Google’s and Bing’s algorithms and search results, search engine optimizers cannot afford to turn a blind eye to social media. Bing incorporates Facebook data into its search results. Google has taken another big step with the introduction of Search, Plus Your World. Last week we explored the social media impact of Search, Plus Your World, in "Google Integrates Google+ in Search Results." In this article, I'll focus on the search-engine-optimization impact of this new feature.
Visibility in Search Results
The biggest impact SPYW has on SEO is the visual and personal nature of the results it returns. Compare these two search result sets for a very common search phrase: “shoes.”
On the left is the typical Google search result set with a couple of high ranking brands, some local results and image results. On the right is my SPYW result set, made up entirely of what my circle of friends shared on Google+. It contains everything from a fabulously geeky post about modifying shoes with Android to a gleeful post about shopping for shoes to wear to a summer wedding.
The SPYW results are far more visually appealing, with the many images and mug shots of faces I’ll recognize because they’re in my Google+ Circles. It’s also much more entertaining than the straight result set because it's full of opinions and some just weird stuff. So if I’m in the mood to be entertained and see what people I know think about a topic, SPYW is great.
But what if I want to buy shoes for my wedding in four months? This SPYW result set is not in the least bit useful to me. Even if I narrow my search query to “ivory wedge wedding shoes,” the SPYW results are still not useful in my online purchase quest.
It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that SPYW is not relevant to ecommerce SEO. But that would be a premise based on a couple of things that are specifically true about my interactions on Google+, which determines the deeply personalized results I’ll receive in SPYW. First, nearly all my Google+ friends are obsessed with SEO or Android or technology in general, not shoes. Second, I’ve not been able to coax most of my Facebook and Twitter friends over to Google+. The everyday girly interests we share are still occurring on Facebook rather than Google+. Third, I haven’t +1’d a single shoe brand. All of these factors — specific to my interactions in Google+ — limit Google’s SPYW usefulness in an ecommerce query for “shoes” or “ivory wedge wedding shoes.”
This dive into the minutia of my personal Google+ activity is meant to illustrate a larger point. Just as my Google+ activity is specific to the people I know, their willingness to join Google+, and their desire to share certain things and not other things on Google+, so is every other individual’s Google+ activity out there. This is personalization at the most individual level, and represents a completely different SPYW experience for each of those people.
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