If you are signed in to Google, your results have probably changed this month. On January 10, Google launched Search plus Your World, and signed-in results on google.com in English now include content from Google+: posts from people in your circles, photos shared by your contacts, and profiles of people Google suggests you follow, displayed beside the results.
From Bali, where Robert Scales is pursuing dive training while helping dive operators with their websites and social media, one observation stands out: two people can search the exact same words and get different pages. Not entirely different, but enough that the usual question of "where do we rank" loses its relevance.
That is the essence of this change. The Google+ component may or may not last. Personalization is here to stay.
What does Search plus Your World actually do?
Google has been quietly personalizing results for some time. Since December 2009, it has done so even for users who are not signed in, based on their previous searches. The mechanism is subtle, and most business owners we speak with are unaware of it.
Search plus Your World makes personalization visible. Signed-in users see three new features:
- Personal results, meaning Google+ posts and photos from people they are connected to, mixed into the normal list.
- Profiles of people they know, or might know, appearing as they type.
- A box on the right suggesting Google+ profiles and pages related to the search.
A toggle allows users to turn personal results off. It is likely that few people will use it.
Twitter protested publicly on the day of the launch, and many search specialists share that criticism. A search on a topic brings up Google+ pages in positions where a Twitter account would clearly be more useful. This week, engineers from Facebook, Twitter and MySpace even released a bookmarklet called "Don't be evil" that shows what the results would look like if Google selected the most relevant social profile rather than its own. This integration clearly uses Google's search engine to favour its own social network.
Why is there no longer a single page one?
Almost every small business owner has done it: search for their main keyword, note their position, then celebrate or worry.
That practice was already unreliable. As of this month, it is no longer reliable at all. What you see is what Google shows you, based on your history, your connections and your location. Someone in Sydney planning a dive trip sees something else. So does someone in Vancouver.
If you send your web provider screenshots of your ranking, we recommend discontinuing the practice: they provide almost no information. Google already knows you search for your own site every morning, and it readily shows it near the top of your results.
Which indicators should be monitored instead of a single ranking?
Look at trends across a large number of searches. Google Webmaster Tools offers a Search Queries report listing the searches people actually used to find your site, with impressions, clicks and average position. The data is approximate, but far more reliable than a single search from your own laptop.
Then examine what happens after the click: emails, phone calls, bookings. A ranking is an estimate. A booking is revenue.
For a rough idea of what a stranger sees, sign out or open a private browser window. Google still takes your location into account even then, so the result should be interpreted with caution.
What is Google authorship?
The other topic drawing attention in the search community is authorship, the attribution of articles to their author. Last June, Google began supporting a small piece of markup, rel="author". By linking your articles to your Google+ profile, your photo may appear next to your article in the results, if Google deems it relevant.
The feature is generating considerable interest. A small headshot on a page of blue links attracts clicks. Bloggers are adopting it quickly, and most SEO blogs have published setup guides.
It is impossible to predict whether the photo will be kept. Google modifies these features at its discretion, and we advise against building an entire strategy around it.
The underlying principle, however, is likely to endure. Google wants to know who wrote a piece of content and whether that person knows the subject. After Panda targeted content farms last year, this is a logical next step. A page written by a real, named person with a track record inspires more trust than an anonymous one.
For a small business, the approach is simple: sign your articles, and explain who you are and what you have done. A dive instructor who has dived a site hundreds of times and describes it in concrete terms outperforms a generic, unsigned page on "the beauty of the underwater world". The same applies to a sugar shack owner describing how the season went.
Why build real relationships rather than follower counts?
The main lesson of this change has little to do with Google+ itself. If results increasingly depend on users' connections, the businesses that succeed will be those people genuinely know and recommend.
Many dive shops are currently trying to accumulate followers: contests, "like us to win a free dive", follow-for-follow exchanges. The numbers rise, with no other result. A thousand strangers who clicked once for a prize do not share your posts and do not book.
Fifty past guests who had an excellent week, on the other hand, do. They write reviews, tag you in their photos and recommend you to their relatives.
That is where we recommend focusing effort: reviews, a mention in the local paper, a forum thread where people recommend you unprompted. These efforts take time, and all of them eventually show up in search. They will remain effective even if Google+ does not succeed. Before turning your attention to any social network, also make sure the basics of local SEO are in place, so that people nearby who are looking for you can find you.
Should a small business invest in Google+?
This question comes up often. Google only opened Google+ pages to businesses in November, so almost no business yet has one that is fully developed.
Our recommendation is to create a page, complete it properly, link it to your site and post when you have relevant information to share, without devoting hours to it. As Google's own network, it will carry some weight in search for as long as Google wishes. However, no customer has yet arrived through Google+ in the projects we follow.
For the essential facts on this launch, Wikipedia's page on Search plus Your World provides a short summary.
One conclusion is certain: as of this month, the claim "we're number one on Google" is no longer accurate, even though it will likely continue to be repeated for years.