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Google Search Adds Social Media Functions

By Michael Stelzner

I was searching Google this morning and noticed some strange icons next to my search results (see images below).

Google has added a few new capabilities to its search results.  One of the more interesting ones is the ability to add a public comment on any website that appears in a search result.  This appears to be directly from the StumbleUpon playbook.

As you can see above (see the Wikipedia link), a small bubble appears with lines in it after the search result.  By clicking on that bubble, you are provided a quick way to comment on a site (see second example above).

However, even more interesting are the arrows that appear next to the search results (see below).  By clicking on the correct icon, you can promote OR remove the item from your search results.  This appears right out of the DIGG playbook.

I think the bigger question for many search engine optimization folks is this: How will these user generated actions impact the listings of pages.   Or perhaps, how might they be manipulated to get certain websites to appear on the first page of Google?

What are your thoughts on this new change from Google?

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 7:56 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • This is interesting actually. Although they are getting better at identifying legitimate websites, Google spiders still get it wrong sometimes. And of course having a human staff to review the billions of searches is wildly impractical.

    But why not have the searching public do it for you?

    If this is having any SEO impact at all, I would think it would likely work as a mass aggregate system, with only the anomalies having any huge effect. For example, if millions of people deleted the top search result, this would send a warning off to Google that maybe something is up with that site, and needs review for possible removal. On the other hand, if the number two spot keeps getting favourited, perhaps that's an indication it should go to number one...

    But then, perhaps it's just another mass collection of data that will be used later. Or perhaps it is just what it says -- a personal way to help you get the most from your own search results...

    ~Graham
  • This is a little scary. Not sure how that information will be used.
  • To be honest, when I saw that function a couple of days ago, I signed out of my Google account. It sort of freaked me out. I try to search "incognito" -- as if anyone really can.

    <abbr>Dianna Huff's last blog post..Are You Having Conversations with Your Customers?</abbr>
  • It's one of the new features that Google rolled out last month, it does not have any direct impact on SEO but rather tailored to improve user's search experience. It's called the SearchWiki.

    You can customise your search results with rankings,deletion and notes - plus ,see how other people using Google have tailored their searches.

    Any changes done with a Shared Google Account will impact the results for every other user.

    See link for more http://googlesystem.blogspot.c...


    Please delete one if duplicated
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