Google+ Marketing Blueprint-4

3. Benefits of Google+ in Search

5 Ways Google+ Changes Search

Here are a few ways Google+ will influence how you will get traffic from Google's search engine, whether by boosting your position in search results, increasing the chances that people will click into your site, or other factors.

 

1. Improving Google Search

As a result of Google+, Google will be able to improve its search engine results pages through the enhanced information it will be able to collect from your social circle.

Google+ offers a lot of elements that will allow Google to understand trends and what people are interested faster than ever before. Not only can they see what you share with your friends or what you are reading, but now they can also see which of your friends are most important to you.

In the past, they could have had a broad vision of your followers on Twitter, but now they can directly see exactly how you interact with those people. For example, do you frequently share links with only a small handful of people?

If you have a very tight relationship with a small network and a broader network that you are less engaged with, Google could know to promote your tight relationships in search results or use ads over the broad network.

Essentially, Google is getting deeper vision into how individual users share and discuss things on the internet. In the past, it had a limited vision of this. Now Google can own the complete picture. When placing recommendations on the results pages or looking for a certain page to promote, Google will now know which of your friends you trust and listen to the most.

Also, Google will have better insight into who your favorite authors are on certain blogs. If a blog has many authors and you tend to prefer a few of them or specific topics that the blog covers, Google can better adjust its rankings to show what you are interested in.

2. Improved Search Results Quality

Another benefit that Google+ brings to search is that results become much harder to cheat. Google can now more easily police who has a real profile and who is a spammer, and watch how they try to influence search results.

It's not for Spammers. But that's a good thing!

When Google sees a profile that only shares and votes for things on one website and nothing else, it knows who target as a spammer. If it sees profiles dominated exclusively by +1s, it might get suspicious. Let's take this one step further.

If profiles are only following other profiles characterized by such behavior, Google might consider them suspect. Less gaming in Google's results is a long-time goal for the search engine giant. Some spam sites are trying to sell +1 votes already, but it is unlikely to be worthwhile- -Google can easily watch for profiles that do nothing but spam votes and discount the value of those votes.

TIP: For that reason, I'd suggest you avoid buying Google+ Like gigs on sites like Fiverr.

3. Changing How You Get Traffic

Google also rolled out its version of the tweet or share button, the +1. These +1 buttons appear in Google's search results and can be embedded on other websites as well. They are tied to a destination page address, just like shares or tweets are.

The +1 count that is displayed on each button is based on the address of the page where it sits. This detail is really important to be aware of, because this may influence how you design your website.

If you're creating landing pages for paid search campaigns, and your pages have several variations, all of the +1 votes that you earn will be broken down separately for each page address.

Also, be aware that the number of +1 votes you have for a specific page can affect its Quality Score, which is critical when working on a budget for your paid ads. This isn't a huge problem, but it's important to be aware of.

Every time you move a page or change the address of something, you'll be resetting the +1 count for that page.