Google’s Search Plus Your World

Google’s unveiling of  “Search Plus Your World”  last week signifies a new look SERP for 2012. This integration of Google Search with Google+ data means that if you are signed into a Google Account, your results will now be personalised with updates, posts, photo, video and other media from within your circles.

The search results page has introduced a new toggle on the upper right of the search results page where you can see what your search results look like.

At a single click you can see the personalised view of your search results. If toggled to No Personal Results, it means that Google will no longer display results from your friends, no private information and no personalization of results based on your Web History will be shown.

With Search plus Your World enabled you can do the following:
Personal Results – allows you to find personal content shared to you by people who matter. This includes blog entries as well as Google+ photos and posts. Both your own and those shared specifically with you will be visible on your results page.

Profiles in Search – allows you to immediately find the people whom you are close to or interested in following. You can even connect with them instantly from Google SERPS.

People and Pages – allows you to connect directly to Google+ with people who frequently discuss the topics you are interested in and gives you the chance to interact with them.

So how is this new innovation changing SERP appearance? Just take a look at these cool features.

Green arrow shows that there are “50 personal results and 419,000 other results” that have been found. Then some of those 50 results will be combined into the first page of results being shown.

Yellow arrow shows that when the button with a person icon is shown dark, it means results are being personalized.

Purple arrow shows the new toggle that Google has introduced. It allows you to switch between personalized and non-personalized results.

So What Does Search Plus Your World mean for SEO?

This is yet another major step towards a completed personalised search experience, following in from the introduction of Google+1. This might be great news to users, as it moves towards individuals seeing results that they trust, recognise, and favour – but for SEOs and webmasters it means that generating organic traffic may become not just about rankings and more about the overall marketing and onsite experience. More and more, social media optimisation will be an important factor in reaching out to and retaining visitors. This also moves towards a SERP landscape where understanding and utilising Google Products can give you a significant advantage.

We’ll be keeping track of Search Plus Your World over the coming weeks to give you further information on it’s impact to SEO.