Google+ Search Results - The Social and Non Social Indicators

Google Social Plus Box

Google Plus Box

The real topic here is Google+ search and the results variations and how they are being generated. I noticed that some people could not seem to understand very well why a page may not show organically anymore when not socially logged in and why it can still show a Google Plus Box for someone whether logged in or not. The simple answer is that if you are out SEO'd by another page you will not show in the results organically if their page is better optimized than your page whether you’re logged in socially or non-socially. The Google Plus Box can still show as a result, but you may have loosed your organic listing because of that fact. The Plus Box has to be running on a social algorithm instead of the organic algorithm or the algorithm is the same but has some type of filter is in place. There are also times when the Google Plus Box does not produce any results at all. These algorithmic changes are random and can change on a daily basis so never expect the same results every day. If you are not logged in socially you can still get a result organically with the stats from your Google+ profile page by making use of the rel=author attribute which will be discussed later. But remember that just because there is a profile picture next to the search result does not mean you are logged in socially. You may also notice that at times you can see the number's associated with the amount of people in the individual's circle's. Why Google show's the numbers is possibly due to the fact that once a certain status is reached Google has the option to show this on the result. All of this wraps around the fact that you’re able to toggle the social/non A social results, but yet it still provides a Google Plus Box at various time's a long with organic results. Let's start with the Google +1 button.

Google+ 1's

Google Plus One Button

As you possibly have already noticed is that if you're a Google+ user that you do not have the option to create a +1 page for a Google+ Business Profile. It only seems logical that Google should allow you to have a +1  for your Google+ Business Profile and not just your personal profile. I am at the fact that when you +1 something it only get's listed on your personal profile page and not your business page. I understand that there is no way to split the +1's into each specific profile page at this time, but it just seems to me that being able to only allow +1's of my own link's on my Google+ Business Profile would allow me to only +1 my own content. This would of course be primarily the same thing as bookmarking, which is really what the +1 does on your personal profile page. Now there are other factors of course involved with the +1 and what types of effect's it has in the search results and it continues to be an ongoing discussion with lot's of open opportunities for analysis and discussion, but more on that later. Let's cover the indicators as a whole first.

Plus One - Post - Stream

Google+ One Personal Profile With Link

Google+ One Business Profile Without Link

Okay, the post page allows for posting links of what you choose which remains on the page for an undefined length of time up to this point. This allows for permanent link's to be built for your content in regard's to your post which is exactly what the +1 does for a site you +1. So what is the difference between having a post or a +1 is the real question at hand. The +1 is a social indicator to Google that your content is being shared with professionals in your industry and networker's interested in your content. This also brings to light the fact that you can not share +1's but you can share post from stream's and that are created from post's. Now yes that may seem a tad confusing but that is why you should keep reading. Your stream is a post that can be +1'd which allows for another social indicator to Google that your content is being disbursed. The +1'ing, sharing and posting shows social activity to Google which is an important factor for the social SEO results. You can also gain social activity by re-sharing a post as well. This re-sharing of your post or post created by other Google+ user's is also another way to generate new follower's and show more activity to Google because this is too another factor when Google try's to determine what content should be ranked higher in the SERP's and the Google Plus Box.

Google View Ripple's

Your stream is constantly feeding content to your profile because you choose to follow certain people in your circles. This is when your content gain's its' maximum visibility for your reader's. If your post catch's the attention of one of your follower's then the post has a chance to be re-shared from one person to the next. This is exactly what your want to happen. The more your content is shared the higher your social factor become's to Google. You can determine your social share activity in several ways but the easiest and most effective way to gain insight on how a post may be performing is by viewing the ripples of your post.

Next, every post which is feed to the stream has the possibility of being +1'd by followers. If one of these posts is +1'd then those post are bookmarked onto the +1's page for later viewing. This typical use of social bookmarking is a common technique used by SEO professional's to generate more traffic and quality links to a website. With that being said, it brings us back to the fact that you can not generate +1's on your Google+ Business Profile but you can on your personal profile. Now there is the option to delete the +1's from your personal profile if you are choosing to just +1 your on content, but then you lose the value of being seen on the SERP's and Google Plus Box for something you +1'd for someone else. That added value give's you additional exposure to people searching for something socially and organically, but only show's up in the organic result with your picture if you +1'd someone's page.

So you may be thinking why would you not want to +1 something you like when you it can bring you more exposure on the search results? Well if you’re like me you do not like all the clutter and let's face it I am the type of individual who does not like clutter. It seems spam to me sort of to have the huge list of +1's on a page with no organization or because someone would not let you place a link on their page unless you +1'd their website. Which brings us to the fact that some businesses have found ways to allow you to place a link on their website if you +1 their page. This become's what is known as reciprocal linking. If you're a fan of reciprocal linking then you like that option, if not you could consider it link exchanging which has minimal SEO gain now a day's especially if it is not a relevant site to what your business is about, unless of course you are exchanging links with Google.

Tying it all Together

Rand Fishkin - SEOmoz

Now if you have not stopped reading yet, we are going to completely tie this to the Google Plus Box being generated in the SERP's. First thing's first, if you have not noticed the Google Plus Box only show's on the first page of Google when performing the search. The second page and beyond no longer display's the Google Plus Box from there on. Some have said this is due to the fact that Google could lose out on ad revenue because it requires ad space to be taken up on the page. But honestly, Google has plenty of space to generate ad revenue so this does not seem to be so true in my opinion because the ads are still there and the searcher still see's the top portion of the ads on the page and only needs to scroll just a little to see all the ads. With that being said, the Google Plus Box does rotate the social profiles if you were to refresh the page for the same search. This rotation can occur because social factor's are constantly changing by the second and one profile could have gained more social significance than another. Also Google could be trying to play fair in some aspect by showing these on a rotation because your circles contain more than just a few people in each circle. The biggest factor though is how well your profile is optimized which of course can produce better result's than your competitor.

No Google Plus Box

The Google Plus Box does not show for all searches though when searching socially or non-socially, but still produces social significance in the organic results even if your toggle is set to social or non social. If you will notice though the +1 button option disappears from the organic results once you toggle off the social search. In past post this has been referred to as logging in and logging out or on/off. In order to +1 something you have to be logged in through a G-mail account. Even though you are not producing social results Google still is using social indicators to help produce results organically. Now, I can not say why Google does not always show the Google Plus Box, but for whatever reason I am sure they have one.

Something else that revolves around the social indicator's and search significance concern's how the data is collected and displayed by Google in Google Analytic's. Several post have been written on this topic in the past few month's about how Google display's "not provided" data in Google Analytic's. This loss of data has made the work of an SEO Professional more difficult when determining how people are finding your business in the search results. This ties in because when you are logged in socially the data is collected but listed in Google Analytic's as "not provided" data. But if you were to log out socially and search the data show's what keywords and phrases were used to find your business in Google Analytic's. Now this does not have anything to do with the Google Plus Box of course but it is one of the factor's correlating to the social indicator's and how the data is utilized. One last thing that should be mentioned about search results, the authors attribute.

Author Attribute

Article Base Author

The use of the rel=author is part of Google and how they show results. But keep in mind the rel=author is connected to your Google+ personal profile. If you are not making use of the rel=author attribute then you should think about it, especially if your against people copying your content. The rel=author attribute can be easily connected by placing a link to your Google+ profile on your website and by placing a link on your Google+ profile to the page you placed the Google+ link to your profile on your website. You must have the Google+ portion in the anchor text for the link as well for this to work properly. You can also have a rel=author attribute associated with more than just Google+, this too is another preventive way of protecting your content and helping clean up the spam on the Internet. Article Base is another website that you can post your articles on and establish a rel=author attribute on as well, this same reciprocal linking still applies though. You link Article Base to your Google+ profile and vice verse. The use of the rel=author attribute is another great way to produce stronger social gain's for your Google+ profile because you are more easily referenced to your Google+ profile.

Link Worx Seo - Ty Whalin - Google Plus Profile

Thank you for reading and hope this was helpful on your quest to reach the top. If you care to join and receive more information about proper and up to date SEO topic's then please join me and contribute any advice, questions, doubt's or responses. You can find a link above to connect or by selecting the graphic. Link Worx Seo tries to provide the most current and available information about how to topic's and current SEO news. But as any SEO business professional knows it can be difficult at times to keep up with everything in the world of SEO. The coverage in this post was from a four month's of analysis and first hand experiences of searching, features, trials, testing and compiled information. Got to love it, thank you and hope to talk to you soon. 

Link Worx Seo

Google Goes Social Search and What it Means to FaceBook and Twitter

This will be an interesting feature of user of Google+. The options of turning it on or off is a very important part of it all. As mentioned in another post on the Huffington Post, it is the equivalent of sign in and sign out. This is going to be interesting for SEO and the impact it will have down the road. Main reason, the "not provided" data aspect. If your signed into Google the data is not collected which then means you are not getting your keywords search terms reported back to Google analytics. So, if your signed out you no longer get social results, which is why it will be interesting. What kind of data is collected when signed into Google on the social side? Going to keep an eye on how it effects the social engagement metrics and what it means for data tracking.

The sign in and sign out feature which in latent terms is the same as throwing a switch to change the results, but here is the catch. If your signed in but shut off the social feature the data in Google analytics will still be collecting data but list it as "not provided". People complained for a long time that Google was producing unwanted results, well now people are complaining that Google has gotten too specific with the search engine results. I believe Google to be trying to find a certain median for the two and has possibly gone overboard, but will not hold them to that until I personally do some testing and get used to the new ideal of the social switch. Of course none of this matters unless you are a Google+ user or even use Google at all.

There are data mining issues between companies and the uneasy topic of privacy as well between - not just Google, but other companies. This social search feature makes sense if you are Google. Google no longer has a contract with Twiter and surely does not have any contract with FaceBook,  Bing is the one who has the contract with Twitter which may or may not be renewed. It seems Google decided the solution was to improve all their services and design a social platform that remedies all the issues at hand. I can not blame Google for wanting to show their own social platform results from Google+. It reduces the risk of privacy issue's and utilizes the data Google has collected without problems from other companies such as Bing, Yahoo!, FaceBook and Twitter.

Remember good old Yahoo!? No one said much about it when Yahoo! implemented there own personal profiles and blog  commenting area and started showing their results for those features. Plus, the are easily connected to FaceBook and so is Bing. Do you see any of these social service connection's on Google? No. The outcome could be this, non users of Google and the vast features they offer are loosing out because there are a ton of thing's Google has done well and people are missing out if they are not using these free services. It boils down to preference at this point. What is your take on the new social features from Google?As soon as I finished writing this post, Mr. Schmidt of Google talked about how Google would be glad to incorporate FaceBook and Twitter into their results with some kind of agreement

Google does index and produce results for FaceBook and Twitter but it is only the data that is publicly accessible, as not to produce wrong doing by Google since it is publicly accessible. Google has followed Twitter's policies and no one know's why the company agreement's between the two were severed. This could have something to do with Bing and what they Microsoft offered Twitter. Twitter does have a "no follow" link policy in place which is why Google can not index the Twitter content unless it is publicly accessible. Here is the other catch, if you no anything about this and the use of the "no follow" rel link then this is interesting. Google+ links posted on your Facebook page are of "follow", but Twitter is not.

I found that to be very interesting in regards to the back and forth dispute. This tells me that the policy in place is actually hurting Twitter more than it is helping. If Google+ is such a competitor for FaceBook then why would FaceBook have a "follow" Google+ rel link on FaceBook? As for Twitter this "no follow" rel is in place for Google+ and FaceBook and any link being posted on my profile. @LinkWorxSeo, this just further explains how Twitter is hurting themselves. This is a very interesting bit of information for anyone in the industry of SEO in regards to the "follow" or "no follow" relevant  linking.

RSS Creation and Syndicating Your Feeds

What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML-based file format for sharing and distributing Web content, such as news headlines, blog articles, news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers. With a RSS reader, you can keep track and maintain your favorite content in one centralized location. The use of aggregator's and readers make is simple to keep track of your the content you subscribe too by means of a desktop or a web interface. Viewing and reading data feeds from various news sources, including headlines, summaries and links to full stories can be overwhelming at times so managing your subscriptions is as simple as a click of a mouse. There is always an option available to subscribe and unsubscribe from RSS Feeds if you wish. There are hundreds of available RSS generators to create a feed from and is relatively easy to do even for a novice web user. As RSS files are essentially XML formatted plain text, the RSS file itself is relatively easily read both by automated processes and by humans alike and most RSS Feeds have styling options by making use of a .xsl style sheet applied. If you are an FeedBurner user you even have the options of monetizing your feeds with Google AdSense ads, which ultimately can generate a source of income with a little effort.

How do I access RSS?

News Aggregators (also called Readers) will download and display RSS feeds for you. A number of free and commercial News Aggregators are available for download. Many aggregator's are separate, “stand-alone” programs; other services will let you add RSS feeds to a Web page. Pretty simple actually. Get all the news you can handle without having to visit the website you get your news from. Just subscribe and wait for it to start flowing in by the masses.

Another way many people use RSS feeds is by incorporating content into weblogs, or “blogs” or to a website. Blogs are usually website comprised of pages comprised frequently updated items, web links and useful content for people to ready and become informed on a topic or story of interest. Other forms of blogging is used for publishing traditional journalism, personal journals, group discussions around a topic, and a combination of anything in-between.

Learn Valuable Google AdWords and Local SEO Information

Google AdWords Auction

Now this is a fantastic info-graphic. I have been keeping up with the changes going on with Google as much as possible.
 Google is at an incredible pace right now implementing changes to all kinds of products and different area's. This info-graphic graphic really breaks it down to a very understandable and easy to understand format. I found that the portion showing the significance of the quality of the keyword allowed the bidder to pay less for the keyword while ranking higher.

This type of Ad relevancy is used on a daily basis. I was just discussing this ad relevancy with someone the other  night and the individual said that he was inside of his e-mail and reading something about hams or talking to someone about hams and Google instantly picked up the fact that one of the ads to display inside of the e-mail account was about ham's. 

In turn this makes the combination and matching of the message he was reading and the ad being displayed the key point. Google in essence, suggested the ad based on what was being read which gave Google and the company paying for the ad a possible option of producing a click, which of course generates revenue for Google and a possible sale for the company paying for the ad space.

This is not a new concept for anyone running sponsored ad campaigns but directly correlates with what is being said in the info-graphic. I believe all  of this is directly connected with Google's changes being implemented for fresh content and how Google is indexing the most recent news and events, etc… at the most relevant and newest date possible based on the relevancy of the search term. This ad display not only is more cost effective for the  company posting the ad, but provides the most relevant SERP's for the user performing the search. The newest and hottest breaking story is not going to be the newest and the hottest if it takes hours to get seen by user's performing searches.

Another portion that catches my attention is the section that says "you can only  have one entry into any query auction from  your account". From this section Google chooses your keyword it finds the most relevant to the search query no matter how many keywords and ads you entered. Then Google enters your ad into the auction because Google chose which keyword was the most relevant to the search query. So Google determines the match type based on the search query and then determines what is most relevant and then enters it into the auction.

This is no new information for paid search advertising. Setting up an effective AdWords campaign takes plenty of research of keywords and a definite understanding of the competition. There are plenty of tools available to assist any search engine marketer to create an effective campaign. If you think about it your creating ad relevancy the same as Google, just not with a massively sophisticated algorithm. Your determining your keywords and your ads to display to the user when they perform their search. The same principle applies here your effectively trying to target the ad to the user based on the search they use.

When the results are posted the user is shown the most relevant ad based on what they are searching for which is determined by the keywords being used, whether long tail or a generic search term. Not only does Google do this ad relevancy but Face book, Bing and Yahoo! as well. This kind of ad function is designed to be a more human approach instead.

Another great example is the instant search being used by search engines. This instant search makes the suggestions based on your search entry. Of course the suggestions are not always correct, but are fairly convenient for most individuals. The instant search is an option and can be turned off through your browser settings along with local browser and search tracking. Just remember that if you ever want to determine your placement in the SERP's by a search, first clear your browser history and make sure your logged out of your account associated with the current search engine. Your results are going to be different than if you search while logged  in.

Finally, if you noticed as well that this same principle applies  to local search results. This relevancy is determined by Geo-Targeting. This is nothing new as well but if your not aware of how this works - your browser is well aware of where you are located because of browser sniffers and settings inside of your web browser. You can shut off some of these functions as well, but I would not worry about it to much. Well, with that being said, local placement pretty much works in the same manner, when you perform your search the search engine display's the search based on your search term of choice and then display's local placement appropriately. You will notice you do not get a local placement listing for areas outside of your area. This is because of relevancy and location to your search term again. Of course if you enter a Geo-Targeted location other than your location in your search term you will get a different set of results based on the location entered.

These results are not going to display local listings because your search term is Geo-Targeted. Actually at times if your searching with a term that uses a location specific keyword you still may not get a set of local listings displayed in the SERP's. Ah, you may ask why? This is because the level of a search engine optimization campaign may not be a localized specific campaign. It may actually be a more national or world wide campaign vs. a Geo-Targeted campaign. Plus, if Google determines a organic listing's are more dominant than  local listing's it is going to display it that way in the results.

Hopefully, this provides some in insightful information and how the search engines determine the results. It is a complex system and by no means is always perfect. The algorithms change frequently and the necessity for search engine optimization remains a constant. You should continue your search engine optimization campaign and all other marketing venues. Please feel free to share this with whomever you like or in need of in need of (PPC) marketing services.