Google gets personal

Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, posted on the official Google blog that "our dream is to have technology enable everyone to experience the richness of all their information and people around them". What this essentially translates into is that personal search will make it easier to find information, profiles and photos shared on Google+. Searching for specific people and interacting with them will become simpler, and the user's world and experiences will also be accessed through Google's search results.

Examples include finding the right John Smith out of 10000+ John Smiths listed on the internet, looking for professional book reviews but also seeing what friends have said about it, and finding an image of your pet cat called Star, as opposed to the type of star found in a constellation. This fits in with Google's overarching goal as the search engine leader: to deliver more relevant results to its users.

Users will still be able to control their privacy settings and control content that they share and Google will still protect their privacy by allowing users to choose who gets to see the content that they share. Organic and paid searches will remain functioning as usual. Click here to see an introductory video on Search Plus Your World.

Depending on its success and popularity, there are rumours that personal search may eventually include other Google products such as Calendar, Places and apps. Although this would certainly make sense, Google has received much criticism about favouring their own products and creating antitrust issues.

Twitter has opposed Search Plus Your World, stating that "news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We're concerned that as a result of Google's changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone". Google has responded by stating that they were surprised by Twitter's response as Twitter had recently chosen not to extend an agreement with Google that would allow the search engine to index Twitter's database.

The South African climate with regards to Google+ is very lukewarm. There was much hype around the launch of the trial version of Google+, possibly due to the need of an exclusive invite to create an account. However, since then South Africans have not flocked to Google+, undeniably because of the mainstream popularity of Facebook and the real-time aspect of Twitter. There seems to be no real demand for a third social platform in South Africa right now, unless something dramatic changes with Google+. Search Plus Your World is an effort to encourage more people to join Google+ which is still far behind Facebook and Twitter. Businesses using social networks to engage with their customers and other stakeholders have settled confidently for now with formalising Facebook and Twitter strategies into their marketing plans, and should find sufficient success using Facebook and Twitter alongside LinkedIn for 2012 without the need for investing in intensive implementations on Google+ for their brands, however it is important to consider how the Google+ +1 button (similar to Facebook's "like" button and other social bookmarking tools) will start bearing on SEO ventures for websites moving forward.


Author: Jovana, for FGX Studios
www.fgx.co.za
www.facebook.com/fgxstudios
www.twitter.com/fgxstudios