Google+ has crept into SERPs near you. From getting hyper-personalized results popping up everywhere to recommending people to follow or showing you results you've +1'd or posts you've made, Google+ isn't giving you the choice to ignore it. (Unless you use Bing, Yahoo!, or another search service entirely.) Sure, there are ways to depersonalize it; but who has the time for another click, unless you're really getting results you aren't happy with or being an SEO super-sleuth. From author spotlights or highlights from those you've circled, it seems the closer you are to a keyword and its SERPs, the more intense the personalization gets.
Check out my entire page of personalized results when I search for "SEOmoz":
As anyone knows who's tried to do a little bit of personalization to customers, personalization is hard. There are zillions of factors and complex algorithms to work through. But we also know when it comes to conversions, personalization is a huge win-sparkle.
But Google has the employee bandwidth and some of the best minds of several generations working on making personalization happen. Despite their numerous products, search is Google's crown jewel; 80% of searches are done there because they generally deliver better results than their competitors. (Sorry, Bing and Yahoo!, but "Google" is a verb.) In the long-run, personalized results are going to be easier for Google and provide more relevant results for users, which will keep users coming back for more.
Google+ Worker of a You-Sourced Search Engine
Have you signed up for a Google product? Congratulations, you are now a Google volunteer. No, you don't get any benefits except one: using Google's (mostly) free products. Instead, as you surf the web, your movements will make your own crowd-sourced engine. Or as a crowd of one, you-sourced.
When you search for "angel," are you looking for a brooding vampire, not ethereal creatures or charity networks? Don't worry, Google already knows because you're subscribed to the Tumblr Angel Does Stuff and you wrote a blog post about how much you love Lilah Morgan. Not to mention, you've visited Angel's IMDB page while rewatching it with your sweetie and playing "who's that actor?"
Maybe you're new to a field, say it's "SEO." Go ahead and circle Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, or Aaron Wall, SEO influencers as suggested by Google, and bam: their recommendations guide your results.
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Note: Danny Sullivan, more circlers than Lady Gaga.
Got Authority? Yes, You Do.
A huge problem Google has right now is site authority and quality. Page rank and domain authority are attempts to inform rankings which sites have authority and quality content. But this doesn't always work. Spammers and black hats have had years of perfecting the dark force to beat Google.
Last year's Panda algorithm change was a direct assault on sites with duplicate and weak content that were squeezing into rankings. Panda didn't happen to cause SEOs to tear our hair out. No, it was a direct punch against snake oil SERP results and results that made all of us go "meh." You can argue that some sites didn't deserve the hit and got caught in the crossfire, but Panda tossed out a lot of junk.
Now in combination with Panda's tweaks, Google+ creates the ultimate SERP authority: you. You are awesome, and no one knows what you want better than you. Google+ just isn't sending you SERPs based on your subtle hints and wish list anymore; now, it's going directly to you, the source. And if you don't know about it, perhaps your "circles" will.
I've told Google that I love Sherlock, the BBC series, and think way too much about it. Google serves me "Sherlock" SERPs completely filled with what I love. No mention of the books, other TV or film, or various businesses, services, or products using the Sherlock name. My personalized SERP kicks off 3 links that "normally" rank in the top 10. Including a pub chain in Texas, which I'm sure fought hard for that ranking.
Additionally, by giving bloggers the incentive of authority and our tiny photos in SERPs, hooking in your Google+ profile to your blogging platform creates a type of article authority Google hasn't had before. There's a reason Rand has a ridiculous number of Google+ followers; if he put out crap, they'd uncircle him. Now Google knows that Rand's articles are quality content -- mostly likely around SEO, inbound marketing, and entrepreneurship -- Rand's content becomes an extremely strong "safe" ranking factor to serve results on. And he gets his smiling face as a recommended follow for "SEO."
If you haven't started building your authority with the articles you're writing, it's time to jump in. You too can become a safe SERP in your field, interest, or hobby. Are you an authority on something? Is your brand an authority? It's time to start creating content, curating content, and building up your following. If you're considered an authority, your rankings may jump higher than they've ever gone before.
SEOs: No Longer a Pain in Cutts' Butt
Google+ radically changes an SEO's game strategy towards rankings. Good luck getting another SERP into my results for "SEOmoz" the old-fashioned way. That said, the cries of "SEO's finally dead" still remain highly exaggerated. Sloppy SEO and some black hat tactics are certain staked in their tracks. Your keyword stuffed article isn't going to get my +1.
Now I don't expect Google+ to remain ungamed. There's a whole subset of the SEO industry who's made their way on gaming every change Google's made. But the amount of time and energy you'd have to put into gaming Google+ to convince me that you're not a bot...I think you got a little bleach on your hat there.
Ultimately, white hat tactics of quality, linkbait content will prevail in the world of Google+. Whether you're focusing on how-tos or selling jewelry, your content isn't going to get the love of the +1 if it doesn't appeal to the people.
Nowhere Near Perfect
Right now, Google's crowd-sourcing is nowhere near perfect. Not enough people are using Google+ on a regular basis to make a huge impact. Yes, Google says they have 90 million users (800 million on Facebook and 200 million on Twitter for comparison), but no one's sure just how many people are actually using it.
I know my personal information stream seems a little bare with a few heavy-weight champions *cough*SEOs*cough* dominating my results. Not to mention, my own information comes up a lot. This is great when I share out a link, and I'm trying to find it again. This is not so great if I'm say looking for an image of Doctor Who as I still have those on my harddrive. Or if I'm searching for videos of adorable baby pandas (very likely) and Google serves me White Board Friday Videos posted on SEOmoz's Google+; no offense, SEOmoz teammates, but I'd much rather watch the bears with the giant heads.
Besides mass user adoption, the biggest hurdles left are of the philosophical nature: privacy and group-think.
Privacy, know our friend "not provided"? Know how Google Analytics went to court in Germany? Or how SOPA came about? When the non-web marketer sees their friends showing up in their SERPs, they're going to start freaking out. I have a feeling that zombies are on the way out and Skynet and killer robots are back as the villains reflected in our cultural subconscious.
Subtle personalization has been happening for a long time. We like seeing ourselves reflected back in the mirror of advertising, and the best inbound marketing reflects what we need to see, not just what we want to see.
"I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see than a show that 1,000 people want to see." -- Joss Whedon, producer/writer of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Firefly
I love the above quote from Whedon because this is what personalization does at it's best. It gives us what we need, not just want we want. And in giving us what we need, we're less likely to call shenanigans on Google's privacy policy. (Just look at Facebook, who may have even better access to personalization data than Google, and a platform that people get lost on for hours.)
By giving us what we need, Google will also give us diversity of opinions and our feeds can avoid group-think. If my results are completely personalized based on my searches and my circles, they are unlikely to carry thoughts that aren't similar to my own. Seeing only results from other liberal-minded, web marketers who are giant geeks isn't what I need, even if that's the feed I may want to live in.
In order to be truly innovative and understand humanity on the whole, we need a variety of ideas. I need to know that people disagree with my opinions, whether political, personal, or otherwise. And our "circles" have an inherent selection bias in that we generally surround ourselves with people like ourselves.
Not to mention, our circles aren't experts in everything. My coworker Jen Lopez found that her circles don't know anything about hotels in Madrid:
Google+ Personalization: Easy-as-Pie Win-Sparkle.
As Google+ builds and more people find value in adopting it as part of their social world, the SERPs will improve. And given that Google adjusts its search algorithm over 500 times in a year, I suspect there's already geniuses working on these problems. The more Google builds out Google+ for personalization and pushes its you-sourced engine, the better the results will get and the easier it will be for Google to serve each of us what we need.
As we head into a world of personalization, we SEOs are going to focus on the creation of content and distribution of content more than ever. We're investing in building our authority on subjects for our businesses and hobbies, and there's nothing better than getting in on the ground-floor.
Make Google+ personalization a win-sparkle for you and your customers. Embrace better content, build your own authority, and make the you-sourced search engine even cooler.
I agree mostly with the concepts you are sharing...
But I still see two major flaws in the hiper customized SERPS of Google right now:
So... right now I'll be using the Don't be Evil button and Wajam to have a real social search with Google.
With the exception of Jen's hotel search, I've found that when I'm searching for something my friends and I don't know anything about (or haven't posted anything about) that I haven't see any personalization at all.
I agree that the best social searches will include data from Twitter and Facebook. From what I understand, Twitter data is still getting pretty good signal (not as strong as pre-G+). But this sounds like it would be a good experiment.
I agree that Google is trying to help the end user by providing the best, most relevant results, but I disagree that this changes the SEO 'game'. Yes we need to optimise for search engines, but if that's all we're doing, we've forgotten about the most important person - the end user. Google wants us to give users the best experience possible and if we do this, we'll see our content being shared and +1'd, but if we continue to attempt some kind of manipulation for search engines' sake, it's not a good long term strategy.
We've known for some time that providing great content and UX is great for SEO, I see Google's personalised results as just an extension of this.
While there are certainly a lot of SEOs who've focused on the end user with content and UX, not all of them have. Especially those looking for the quick & easy road.
What I find weird is that all the pages from the domain listed in our Google+ profile automatically say 'Heart Internet recommends this' in search results even though we haven't +1'd any pages using our account. So that eliminates us being able to choose which pages we recommend (people are more likely going to be looking for web hosting than our privacy policy, but both are +1'd). I guess it's an attempt to avoid people gaming the system, but it's counterproductive at the same time.
The SERPs for our brand are completely different when viewed from an account that likes us on Google+; there are so many internal results and video results (not sure why the video thing is so big as we only have a handful of videos and they aren't particularly recent). It's going to take some getting used to.
Whilst I don't think traditional SEO is going to die just yet, there's going to be a considerable amount of 'splitting' rather than just targeting Google as a whole.
This personalization thingy is going way too fast, if you ask me. This often gives me totally irrelevant results, and I often can`t find what I want. The whole thing looks like a gigantic experiment at the moment. Hopefully, it will get better soon though.
Hi nice examples of the power of Google+, I think the best thing for SEO's to do is to work with Social Teams and PR very closely. You need to know how to leverage your efforts effectively. Recently I have been working pretty much directly with the social and PR guys and if I see an opportunity from Google+ I am all over it within the day it is released if possible =)
Another thing to bare in mind is 99% of "Normal" web users will not see the high amount of personalization that we currently see as SEO's becuase we are the market leaders with Google+ and we are sharing every thing possible, if I look at serps on my friends computers no personalization what so ever!!
But in 2 years time things could be very different if Google+ truely takes off the main stream market, so I agree now is the time to get involved.
Regards, James Norquay
Now is definitely the time to start working closely with your social media and PR team members or teams closely.
Yes, I agree that a lot of personalization has not hit the vast majority of people. (We SEOs are such early adopters! :D) But like you said, in a couple years, it's going to be more and more personalized for everyone.
Just a quick note out-of-topic: Google Analytics is no longer illegal to use in Germany. Here's the corresponding data protection officers' press release: https://www.datenschutz-hamburg.de/news/detail/article/beanstandungsfreier-betrieb-von-google-analytics-ab-sofort-moeglich.html
Cool. Thanks for the update!
Ok, this is insane... I mean they started sharing search results page with multiple products mainly Google Maps and other includes Google Images, videos, products and now finally they flip the complete game with personalized results... I mean fully page with friends recommendation is kind of insane to me...
Honestly, in my opinion personalization is not bad as they provide trust worthy results at user end but technically from the SEO perspective this is the new pain in the a**... I don’t think ranking top for keywords is no more important but at the same time having an optimized Google+ profile is also important!
The point is Google is (at least trying) to get better for a user end but from the SEO perspective it’s a new challenge to deal with the Google updates and at the same time satisfy boss/clients in terms of conversions...
I think there's also a danger in the philosophy that the user knows best. It may lead to one-sided-ness of information. For example, what if a user wants to know something new about a specific topic. Logged on, one may get the same search results over and over again.
I like to search both logged on to Google and logged off This way I get different and more results.
Personalisation will be king in the end though. It's just not perfected yet.
Hi Erica, great post. Gotta say I agree with Asif, Google+ you has added another crimp in the life of us SEO'ers. But then what else can we expect from Google :-)
Looks like my social team is going to harp for more pay, as it seems like Google will make G+ count as much as SEO in long run.
Great read Erica - pointed me to some other good resources as well!
I know google+ is not perfect - but it is a breath of fresh air to me. I was interested in online marketing while in college but was a little hesitant to enter into the field after doing some research. My hesitation was driven by the spammy and "unnatural" nature of the techniques many talked about using - keyword stuffing, fake reviews, content created for the sake of engines and not people, and other black hat techniques. Adding the human element to be able to judge rankings and influence them (similar to pandora and stumbleupon thumbs up/down) has made online marketing much more natural and less gamed.
Does this mean that if I want to rank high for a particular person that I should think about targeting that person's friends?
You should definitely be networking with people in the industry. I assume you're targeting someone who's influential in your area of interest.
Does anyone have any idea when this rolls out internationally?
Cutts has mentioned that his only affects around 10-12% of searches. I think it's a mistake (for the company) as far as long term strategies go, but time will obviously tell. The search bubble it creates is really shrinks my exposure to new and better results. Example: You've never seen my excellent site on SEO in your search results because your search bubble is defined by your circles. (Is the average user likely to click on 2nd page results aftre being slammed with 10-12 link recommended by friends via circles? Nope.)
Of course the extent of the +1'ing within your circles will matter but as this gets more and more prevelant, the search bubble only shrinks...soon I'm left with results on page 1 that ONLY my circles +1'ed.
SEO Pro's (White, Grey and Black) are left with 2 choices: Pour more gas on keywords for clients and force clients to become active participiants in goolgle plus (which they don't have time to do) OR slowly, creatively game the system with spam and over time, create false "circle" oriented results.
Unless Google has an "end game" strategy they aren't revealing, this +1 stuff only buggers up the "natural" search results ranking even more.
(Willing to admit there are people at Google smarter than me that know what they are doing. :-)
Great post. While Google plus is meant to help the searcher, it is obviously frustrating but also exciting for the SEO. We may have a (maybe not so easy) in. Side note - as a searcher I am not thrilled with the idea of Google and Facebook knowing all my information. Sometimes it would be nice to turn off all the personalisation, but that takes extra effort and isn't fool proof.
"Content is King”, anyone remember that saying? I must have been hearing that saying for at least 8 or so years. In fact, I thought I had invented the saying myself, only to find out I wasn’t alone. But let’s take a closer look at the saying. Content is King, is clearly ringing true today and into the future more than ever before.
Think about this, if everyone had just listened to this saying when it came out, no one would have to worry about making all kinds of drastic changes to their SEO tactics and Internet Marketing skill set today. Panda never would have been a problem, nor would this new Google+ update have much of an effect.
Arghhhhh!!!! User is King!!! Please let's all stop saying mantras like Content is King, Links are Kings or Social is whatsoever. It's not the What that is central in a marketing strategy, but the Who, and the Who is the user. If you don't create content perfectly focused on your User, even if it spectacular espectacular that content will fail.
Yes, I hate the saying as much as you. However, the basic principle is what I am referring to. Obviously, if the user doesn’t find it of any use to them, it is useless even if you write an entire book. But the basic principle is more directed to Black Hat people that auto generate crap fake content or people that are just writing stuff to get better rankings. More than likely, this kind of content no one will find of any use. Therefore the “user” will not link to it, because it isn’t even worthy of being published.
Nice post Erica,
I agree with most of your points. But in my opinion I think Google is going a way beyond with personalization search. First, there are hardly any people are using Google+ & most of them have just created their account but not activated it or not using it like Facebook & Twitter. If you can take out the stats of people using G+ in India, I think that might be even lower than Orkut which was a good social networking site sometimes back.
Even though, here in india we still haven't received the Search Plus Your World yet, but even if we get & use it for any query then we might get the result from 1 or 2 friends who are into our circles. You know I tried SPYW on the day it was launched & searched for SEO which provides me result from the SEO community & to whom I circled in G+.
Like for example you given of your friend to whom google didn't provided exact results. So, how google will tackle this? What if we don't have friends in Google+? How Google will provide us results then? There are so much questions need to answer from Google.
-Hyderali
Happy Valentines Day! Excellent post.
Statistics and hence user-statistic-based rankings require a good volume of varied data in order to be accurate. Google needs a lot more people to adopt Google+ before its personalisations become really meaningful.
In particular, there's a need for people outside tech and marketing to adopt the service. At present it's dominated by techies, marketers and in particular SEOs.
not sure how I feel about this, but I do know it's making the world of SEO flip upside down!
I can see the "user is king" philosophy. The problem is at the moment Google is not telling us what Google+ users are searching for and then what is fulfilling their needs. That makes it hard to provide the desired content.
I really hope that with these improvements, we'll be able to have more valuable links.. although admittedly this can really make things more difficult but an additional learning for us all..
This is such a great article I had to share it on my Google+ stream, Thanks Erica
Glad you enjoyed it :D
Good insights but
What the….! This is horrible your post create another but in our SEO career we are still finding hard time to optimize on Google and now we should consider Google + too. If Google continue this we should be ready for another crap by Google. Just imagine 90 million users are affecting our search result what about when it should 800 million! Just read How Google+ Could Threaten Google's Core Search Business
The hard truth is that what is bad for the SEO industry isn't necessarily bad for the average end user of a search engine. In general people are far more likely to be looking for something their friends and colleagues may have mentioned than other results.
That article you linked to does not mention that Google is likely to take signals in its unpersonalised results too from 'experts' on Google+_ (i.e. those who are followed extensively). Of course it will give them more credence if you actually have them in a circle but I find it hard to believe that the 'unpersonalised' results will not be affected to some extent too.
Naturally Google will be testing this extensively but if they find it works in providing more useful results then it only makes sense for them to use these social signals.
There is of course no arguing with the antitrust issue Google is obviously steering dangerously close to at the moment. They should really be giving more credence to Twitter etc but that doesn't discount the value of Google+'s own data. In an ideal world Google would give the same weight to competing social networks but that will never happen - they will always argue that they cannot trust others as much as their own where they have full control.
We can try fighting the system or we can evolve with it.
Sure it will probably be the end of people who are SEO's who just spam links and provide no real value. But SEO's who evolve into social savvy content marketers will have many more years in the business.
People seem to be kind of negative recently about SEO saying that we will have no jobs in a few years but last time I checked I have more business then I an keep my hands on or time to do.
Very true... I think we're all seeing a huge amount of interest. Unfortunately a lot of clients come to us with the expectation of quick and easy solutions. At the moment that's no problem, but one day it won't be so simple so it's important to educate out clients as much as possible and as early as possible to avoid letting them down in the long term. If they don't listen... well then we're all doomed! ;-)
Great point, Jolora. I've seen so many people unfamiliar with the nuances of SEO think it's some magic bullet with instant results. As you said, it will take educating clients on realistic expectations. But it will also take finding the right balance between tactics that provide an initial boost and strategies for long-term benefit. That, and a good dose of adaptability.
@ James Norquay you take me totally wrong man. I don’t think any SEO will only run behind the links at least not a single moz user. Now more than 80% SEO evolve themselves as a inbound marketer/web strategist etc and try to promote website as a brand. How says SEO have no jobs in future I can bet our job ratio will increase rapidly in next two, three years.
I am not against the Google+ signals I am against its massive testing level.
I agree we often think as ourselves as being the on the user's side but when we are fighting against other companies to get the websites we're working on ranking are we really truly just thinking about user experience or are we building content to attract more visitors?
It's only natural thatg Google will introduce these as ranking signals - I am convinced that Google was scared to death of the user data Facebook has been building up over the years and their ability to include this as a ranking signal, the search engine that Facebook could have launched would have arguably been a real rival to Google as it could point very clearly to why it was different.
Although it would make sense that Google gives the same weight to all the social channels out there they just don't have the access to the raw data that they have with plus to make it work for them.
Overall, this must be a good thing for us, it means not more passive incomes - that should make the internet marketing comunity that extra bit busy!
Unfortunately...since there really is no search engine on facebook..this is a moot point.This is why google + is going to win...Social with out search is useless.
We just have to keep up with the times man. As that old saying goes... "Content is King", well it even rings more true moving forward.
Old saying “content is king” but new is “Google Circle is Queen”
I am optimizing a site for my client you know what I beat the brand and reach top in Google search result.
Because I recently circle company CEO in my G+ account.
Arhh its personalize result.
Our entire industry is (mostly) based on the decisions and actions of a single company. If they do something, we have to take it into account. We don't get to pick and choose what we optimize for - we simply have to react to what Google does.
The bad news? SEO is getting tougher. There are so many more factors to consider, our jobs get more complicated every day. The influx of social, and Google+ in particular has made our jobs tougher.
The good news? SEO is getting tougher. This creates greater value for knowledgabe specialists who really know the game.
I think google+ will give a chance for old websites with good rank lost some positioning. Im fighting for while with a crap website that has the #1 place in my key word. With this changes in google+ and schema.org, i'm increasing my position easily