Since launching Google Search Plus Your World (SPYW) on January 10th, the Search Engine Marketing world has been a-buzz (or at least a-twitter) about how Google’s new search is going to shake up the industry.
Some have applauded Google’s inclusion of personal results as the logical next step for Search in an ever increasingly social Internet. Others have been cynical, seeing it as a blatant attempt by the search giant to force their Google Plus social platform into a world dominated by Facebook and twitter by building on Google’s monopoly of the search industry.
Predictably there have also been claims that this is the “death of SEO” – the latest move by Google to force the focus of SEM away from manipulating organic results (SEO) towards their cash-cow of sponsored search (Adwords). And its hard not to see the merit in the conspiracy theorist’s argument after October’s SSL encryption of user queries which hides personalised search keywords from Google Analytics organic traffic reports, while retaining the same keywords in Adwords reports.
I dont know if Google is trying to kill SEO, but I think its obvious that there will be increased competition for real estate now that Google + Profiles are showing up at the top of the SERPs as well as on the right side where ads are traditionally displayed. In order to guarantee a position above the fold people might have to turn to Adwords. And Adwords advertisers will have to ensure they are in the top 3 most visible ad positions, while adverts below position 3 might see a decrease in click through rate as they are pushed further down the page.
I also think its vital that advertisers enable the Social Extensions feature within Adwords in order to ensure their adverts and landing pages share +1 votes.
I’d also recommend keeping an eye on predictions about Google Plus. Last year at SMX East I attended a session called “What Every Paid Search Marketer Needs To Know About Google+” and I was particularly interested in some of the predictions that Mathew Guiver made about the future of +1s. I wont go into detail about through all his predictions, but the one that’s of obvious interest to anyone with an Adwords account is the prediction that +1 votes will eventually have a greater impact on average advert position that quality score.
While Google currently deny that there is any impact of +1 on Quality Score or Ad rank, I think that its almost inevitable that Google will start including +1 votes as a sign of relevance, and therefore something that will affect quality score in future.
Also, whether you believe +1s will eventually have a direct effect on quality score, there is no denying that they already have an indirect effect – by making adverts more prominent, thereby increasing click through rate.
The start of 2012 has shown us that Google Plus is not just an attempt to get into social media, but also a way for Google to incorporate social media into search. I’d definitely recommend watching this space. You can start by checking out some more of Mathew Guiver’s +1 predictions available on slideshare here.
Related Posts
