Google Social Search Making Headway

Since 2009, Google has been returning social media results from Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Blogger and more, in your search results. Google knows just as well as (probably better than!) we do that social media plays a huge role in people’s lives around the world, so not including it in search results would be a misfortune. Recently, Google made some changes to Social Search. The new features make social media even more prevalent in your search results, as well as more helpful.

As always, users must be logged into their Google accounts in order to see the features, such as Social Search. Once logged in, if users are connected to others’ Google accounts, they will begin to see search results from people they are directly connected to through different social media sites. In the past, social media results would only show up at the bottom, but now they can and will show up anywhere in your search results, based on relevancy.

If you perform a search for Computer upgrades and your Uncle linked to a related article on Twitter, your Uncle’s tweet will show up in your search results with his name and profile image underneath the result description. How convenient! Not only is Google providing you with relevant results, as always, but now your results are more personalized than ever! You can now ask your Uncle’s advice on computer upgrades, which programs he chose, what he paid for them, where he purchased them, etc. In a day where we have an infinite number of choices, it’s nice to get recommendations from friends and family members.

To understand more of Google Social Search’s features, watch the video:

The SEO benefits here require little to no effort from you, but can return huge results! As I’ve said before, referrals and positive reviews are a very important piece to the SEO marketing puzzle. Google Social Search has simplified the referral process by pulling all reviews, links and comments about your business into one search results page. Now, users searching for your keywords don’t even have to ask around for advice, if anyone they’re connected to has linked to or mentioned your company’s name via social media, Google hands it to them.