Google + just got more important
So you’ve half heartedly setup a Google + page for your travel blog but haven’t yet had time to manage it properly?
After all, you’ve got a Facebook fan page and your twitter account to manage on top of trying to actually publish a blog post. Pinterest.com has also come along and lots of people are diving in, pinning and liking. As of last week the game has changed. In terms of a long term traffic driving strategy you’d be better off spending time engaging via Google +, here’s why.
As of last week, your Google + presence just got more important. Google are starting to roll out “Search Plus Your World”. It sounds interesting but what does it mean? Well, “Search Plus Your World” is kind of self explanatory. It’s a combination of the usual Google search but with an extra option (when you’re logged in) to search within your social connections, including Google +. The search results include other social networks that have publicly crawlable content, this means Facebook and Twitter content won’t be shown. Twitter isn’t too happy about this development:
“we’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.” – Twitter
Google did have a deal with Twitter to tap into tweets for their now defunct social search but this deal ended in the summer 2011 and it was Twitter who ended the arrangement.
Instead of using twitter’s data, Google now turns it’s social attention to it’s own Google + data. Here’s an brief video overview of Search Plus Your World.
Google + Profile Integration
As well as being able to search within your social circle Google is also integrating Google + profiles to the search query box. This means that if you are searching for someone Google will attempt to auto fill your search query with a match from your Google + circles.
Search Ranking Indicator
Google knows how important social is in terms of being an indicator of quality content. Having a human voting element such as the plus one button adds a reliable indicator to it’s other metrics (they use over 100 different metrics) that it uses to rank content. “Search Plus Your World” is another step to integrating Google + and tapping into social media to rank content.
Google never wanted to rely on other social networks such as Facebook or Twitter to provide it with indicators of what people where sharing. Google can’t tap into Facebook’s content as it’s not publicly available and certainly doesn’t have access to their “like” data,Twitter ended their deal to provide tweets way back in the summer of 2011. With Google + it has it’s own system and doesn’t have to rely on other companies to provide data or content to crawl, this is why Google is determined to integrate it with their product offering and to get people using Google +.
For more on the importance of this Google move check out this great video from seomoz.org on Why Every Marketer Now Needs a Google+ Strategy.
Travel Bloggers on Google +
I’ve heard some positive things about Google + from a few travel bloggers (Jodi Ettenberg being one who seems to be engaging on Google +) and have had more in-depth discussions on Google social platform than Twitter or Facebook. Many other travel bloggers haven’t really committed themselves to use Google + as of yet, stating they just don’t have enough time or don’t see any benefit from using it.
Going forward if you have already established a Google + presence and have built up connections/relations you’ll be in a good position to benefit from the exposure that Google’s social network is likely to have in the future. At the moment it comes in the form of “Search plus Your World” but it’s likely that Google will start to use the human voting of quality content via Google + as another metric with which to rank content on.
If you have a big presence on Google + and shared content you stand a good chance of ranking well within “Search plus Your World” and potentially Google’s main web search if the metric is integrated further down the line. Right now, “Search plus Your World” is a big new opportunity to drive traffic. Google are dangling the carrot of potentially exposing your content to billions of users if you have your content shared via Google +. For those that have dismissed Google + so far might now realise that if you continue to ignore it you won’t have the early head start and advantage that you could have by being involved early on.
Now is the time to engage on Google +
Pinterest.com is all very well and it might be good fun, it might even drive some traffic but I’d argue that in the long term your time would be better spent right now engaging via Google +. If you are already engaging via Google’s social network then you may have that head start, if you haven’t, then maybe you should get started?
Search plus Your World is being rolled out at the moment, you’ll need to be signed in with a Google account and be searching on google.com.
If you enjoyed reading this article check out TravMonkey on Google +:
Editor: Paul Dow
Wesite: TravMonkey.com
