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28 January 2010
Posted in
S.E.O
Google Social search is now mainstream! We knew that it would be eventually, but it's happened now. So all you sceptics of the fact that social media matters to business, here you have it, the end-all evidence that you’re wrong, and if you don’t sort it, you're doomed. Completely. It’s still beta, but Google Maps & Earth were both mainstream when they were beta versions (Gmail was beta until last year), so expect it to stick, for a long, long time.
Also, keep in mind that this social circle is based on the connections that you have on your Google account and any other information that they have about you, so remember to keep Google up to date. It pulls connections from your account contact and any services you use only if you remember to list them on your Google profile, so don’t forget to give Google the info it needs or all your social media work is going to waste.
The big idea is that if you are connected to people, they will come up when you search and you will come up when they search as you are much more likely to be relevant and you all have a circle of trust and knowledge. That’s Google’s plan anyway. They have also said that by linking to your photos, blogs, videos and other content on your Google profile, you can improve the results of people in your social circle.
Google have also given a large paragraph of info from their team about how it’s baby season for them, and the new social search allows them to find the same expert advice as normal, but with pages that their friends and contacts have used for the same terms included. This gives you a reason to trust the sites you have never been to before, but people you know use and trust them, and helps you find out why.
To appear in social search you must:
- Connections. You need to make as many as humanly possible.
- Use available social media buttons (and any other ways you can think of) to encourage sharing.
- Try to get as many people as possible to follow you on social networking sites
- Remember to post all your important links to your Google profile. This is important
- You need people to engage with you, so participate in lots of social media.
- Include social networking information on all types of advertising for example: business cards, signs, online adverts, TV, radio, anything really.
Don’t think Google are just going to leave social search to work with standard web search only, oh no. They have huge plans for this baby. They so far have confirmed they will be adding it to news and images, probably even more after that. When it comes out of beta, it may be available to add to any of the Google search types. Now that’s personalising results.
