In 2012, Google launched a new service – more like a new style – of searching for Google+ users. Google refers to the service as “Search, plus Your World”. Most people, however, simply refer to it as “Social Search”. Take a look at the following video by Google to get a run down of how the product works:

Social search for Google+ account holders is enabled by default and is something you should take into serious consideration. Gone are the days where BlackHat SEOs can get you to the top of Google and everyone will see you — with Social Search, Google puts priority on what your friends say is a great result. This means that even if BlackHat SEOs find a way to temporarily boost a website to the top of Google post fuzzy animal updates they’ll be made moot if users say another site is the “Good” result.

Let’s take a quick look at one of the more over-saturated keywords on Google.  Because everyone thinks they are a WordPress Expert, if you were to Google WordPress Expert without being logged into a Google account with Google+ (or Social Search) enabled, you’d see typical results from big names such as WordPress.org and WPMUdev.org:

This is typical and can be expected; however, if you are currently friends with me on Google Plus, you’ll see that I have my personal website +1’d on Google+. This is me vouching that my content is quality, and since you are my friend, you’d rather see what I say is quality vs. what a computer says is probably quality. Anyone currently friends with me on Google+ will see a link to my website under the keyword WordPress Expert on page 1 as shown below:

You can tell it’s a social search result by the little human icon standing next to the search result.  It’ll also show you under the post why this result is showing in your social results: notice how in my example it says Mick Olinik shared this. This way, you can gauge how much you’d like to listen to the potential advice of your friends.

As a website owner, it’s easy to see where this might be a powerful tool for marketing and drawing traffic to your website.  Google social search is not only a way to limit the potential abuse of BlackHat SEOs, but it’s also a way for you as a website owner to draw targeted traffic from your personal circles to your website. This allows you to create highly targeted traffic that has a higher chance of converting rather than being a random individual from a foreign country that “by chance” found your URL in a web result.

To learn more how to use Social Search best on your website, stay tuned.