Google Becomes More Social And It’s Hurting Your Business

Google Becomes More Social -Jeffbullas's Blog http://ow.ly/gKhUd

Conversations in bars and dinner parties about who is right or wrong are often solved by the smart phone being drawn from the pocket or handbag with a subsequent mobile search on “Lord Google” with the question being answered from Wikipedia or another website with authority. Problem solved… using a blunt mobile instrument without a fight breaking out at the bar or the tipping of wine into someone’s lapThe online search industry is embedded in our daily lives with up to 90% of all buying decisions starting with an online search and 89% of all clicks through to  a website occurring from websites that appear on the first page of Google.

Google has been with us for over 10 years now (the company started in 1998) and has just announced a continuing evolution of its search algorithms to maintain its relevancy and that includes more integration with social media that has been occurring since 2009, though you may not have noticed. Google has also added other tweaks such as increasing visibility and ranking for content that is more recent and this puts fresh unique content right in the frame and blogs are essential for companies to maintain  regular published online content.

If you haven’t taken close notice of  Google’s search page recently beyond just looking at your results, just take a look down the left side when you do a Google search and you will notice this refined search banner that has 5 social network elements.

5 Major Social Media Elements In Google Search

1. Images (which includes social media channels such as Flickr)
2. Videos (which includes a well known social network YouTube”)
3. Realtime (this is the feed from Twitter.another social media channel you may have heard of but conveniently renamed by Google)
4. Discussions (this highlights social channels including forums)
5. Blogs (another social web platform)

Google’s Latest Announcement

Google has included some significant changes in its latest announcement including

• Increasing the priority and prominence of search results from platforms such as Twitter, Flickr and Quora (a new social network kid on the block)
• Blending results throughout the page instead of only at the bottom
• Adding friends social media interactions into search results

This is done by an annotation system that lets you know when a friend has shared a specific link or search result. If your friend writes a blog about how to create honey, that result will have an annotation that your friend has “shared this,” either via Google or through one of Google’s three major social integrations.

This will produce a massive increase in social results appearance in search with friends results turning up in if they have tweeted a reference to that particular search term. You can also connect your Google account to social networks like Twitter if you choose either publicly or privately as you may not want to reveal that you are a @spongebobsuperfan on Twitter.

Google On How It Works On YouTube

What Are The Implications For Business?

The implication for business from the latest announcement and the continuing refinements is that if you want to increase your chances of appearing high in a Google search, that just pursuing a SEO link strategy is not going to be as successful as in the past.

It is now a necessity and a priority to be participating on the major social media channels or you are reducing your brands chances of “being found online” high up on search results.

If you are not active on social media because you think it’s all hype then you may be damaging your business because Google is making social search a priority and your potential customers will find it increasingly hard to find you when they do their next online search and you can’t be found.

The reality is that social media integration into search is here to stay and you need to learn the rules of the new social web or you will reduce your organisations visibility and no one wants to be invisible unless you are a super hero or a dinosaur.

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/03/02/google-becomes-more-social-and-its-hurting-your-business/#kDoVtmsvbbZdExoG.99