How Google+ Affects SEO
By Antonio OoiWhen a social network creator is also a search engine creator, a biased search engine privilege will definitely be given to their own social network services unless the search engine creator is dumb; but too bad, dumb people are less likely to be able to create a search engine anyway. You also can’t complain about their biasness as this is how the system of competition being designed to work anyway – they’ll definitely tell you that they never point a gun on your head and force you to choose their products and services. But if you try not to choose any of them, a gun may come to you, not from the corporations but from the government instead – You’re not authorized to gain access to these natural resources. They’re either public (government) properties or private (corporations) properties – not a human property.
Your page appears on #1 SERP? Don’t be happy too early!
If you have a page shared in your Google+, some of you may notice that it usually appears on the first page of Google search results if some right keywords are applied. If you logoff from your Gmail or Google+ on the same browser instance and search again, however, your web page may no longer appear on the first page – it could be beyond top 100! The same may happen to those Google+ members who are in your Google+ circles. If they search with those keywords that are relevant to the page that you shared on Google+ earlier, your page may appear on the first page of their Google search results. Unless you’re using third party rank checker, otherwise you may need to open a new incognito window (if you use Chrome) or logout from your Google account and search again in order to get a more accurate insight on how your pages perform on Google search engine.
Favouring Google+ with Google Search Engine:
The Implications
From the way I look at it, there are two implications out of such action:- Want your pages to appear on #1 SERP of all your potential customers’ searches? Invite all of them to join you on Google+!
Apparently, this is Google’s strategy to take advantage of their search engine to boost up the population of their new social product: Google+. The meaning behind this could be that: “If someone in your Google+ circles are providing the kind of service that you’re looking for, why not favour them first?” But this may also mean that, if you favour Google+ instead of others, they’ll favour you through their search engine. So, does it also mean that if we don’t favour Google+, our web snippets will not be listed on the first or second SERP no matter how optimized your website is? As such, Google+ will be like an offer that you can’t refuse. - Will Google search engine still a fair playground besides getting everyone to join Google+?
Before Google+, all companies have their fair-play on Google search engine, including Facebook Pages. But lately, I seldom see the posts on my Facebook Page listed on Google SERP except those on my Google+. Some may want to argue that Facebook is a direct competitor to Google+ and Google Search Engine owned by Google. But as I mentioned above, will the #1 SERP flooded with posts from Google+ except yours until you get yourself a page on Google+? If this is the case, then in order to have a fair competition again, ones would have no choice but to join Google+ and compete within Google+ itself, which in turn reflects their competition on Google search engine too.
Conclusion
Therefore, collectively speaking, the existence of Google+ introduces no differences to Internet Marketers except one thing: Bringing a great winning advantage to Google+ to battle against other social networks, especially Facebook. When a service is meant to be available to everyone globally, there will be no significant competitive advantage to any particular parties except to the organization who created this service. In this article, what I want to emphasize is, instead of battling through SEO by producing higher content quality on your website, now competitors require to battle with each other by helping Google+ to grow as well. Whether you’re good in SEO or pulling people to join you on Google+ or both, the ultimate winner is still Google. Anything wrong with that? Nothing wrong except when you’re asked to sit, you sit; when you’re asked to stand, you better stand up straight. If you ask me why are we have to live in this way, then my answer will be:
Make a service available to everyone globally, by everyone, for everyone to love and care for each other instead of selling it like a weapon for everyone to compete and kill each other.
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