Leveraging Google Real Time and Social Search

Posted on 01. Feb, 2010 by Pete Hollier in Search Optimization, Social Media

I have long been promoting a holistic approach to online marketing. I of course have met resistance from various individuals who have shown a difference of opinion.

I know of one "Social Media Guru" who has personally admonished me for my interest in Search Engines and their importance to the online visibility and overall performance of a company’s web site. From my "Social Media Guru’s" perspective, Search Engines were a thing of the past, the only thing which had any relevance to businesses online, was the power of recommendations through Social Networks.

At this point I must state I did not disagree with the importance of Social Recommendation, I considered Social Recinnebdatuib as necessary part of an overall holistic approach to improving Internet business performance. It appears that my views on this topic have been somewhat vindicated with the introduction of both Real Time and Social Search, both which integrate a business’s Social Networking relationships and activities into the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Real Time Search

Real Time Search’s objective is to provide search results to a particular search query which are as up to date as possible. These results include the latest Blog Posts, Tweets and News items among various other Social Networking communications which the Search Engines consider relevant to the Searcher’s query. However, in the case of Facebook updates, these are likely to be extremely limited in the near future due to Facebook’s privacy settings, although Google has established the beginning of an agreement with Facebook so this issue is moving forward.

Social Search

Although Google’s Social Search is still carrying the Beta tag, insinuating it is still in the testing stages the service is now available to the public. Social Search requires a Google account and setting up a Google profile. Once you have completed your profile and provided links to your public profiles on various Social Networking web sites, Google crawls your Social contacts. Once this task is completed and your Social Network is determined by Google you will see results from your Social Contacts if they have published content of topical relevance to your Search query.

View a brief video: Setting up Google’s Social Search

Leveraging Real Time and Social Search for business

The Search Environment has changed significantly in the recent past, although the principles of Relevancy and Domain authority are still a significant factor, the new additions to the Search Algorithms offer additional opportunity to perform well in Search, if consideration is given to how this can be leveraged.

Leveraging Real Time Search

Publishing content on a regular basis is fundamental to leveraging Real Time Search to improve the Search Results visibility for your web site. This content can take any form from a Blog Post or Tweet, even a PDF file will show in the Search results for topical relevance for a variety of keywords. It must be remembered that these results are likely to be strictly time limited due to time being a critical factor of this aspect of the Search Algorithm.

Of course time is not the only factor, relevancy of the content to a searcher’s query plays a significant part and should a highly popular keyword be targeted other factors such as Domain authority will impact the search results. However, this being said the time factor is the predominant factor so with some careful planning and keyword research it is possible to develop content which does not target highly popular keywords in favor of less popular long tail keyword phrases to provide your published content visibility in the SERPs for an extended period of time.

Leveraging Social Search

Developing an extensive Social Network now has the potential to increase your company’s visibility in the Search Results. Just as you can see your social connections’ published content, they of course can see yours. In most business cases, many of these Social Contacts will be business related and therefore, when contacts within your Social Environment begin to search for business related topics your published content will be available to them. This of course only works for those of your contact who opt in and develop a Google profile, therefore, it pays to encourage your contacts to register their Google profiles.

The Last Word

The search environment continues to evolve, the worst thing any business could do is to depend on previous successes in the Search Results. Real Time Search and Social Search are just two of the many changes within Search which impact "established" search results. The introduction of Caffeine by Google also includes variances to the Search Results which have tremendous potential to alter the results which have been dominant in the past.

To keep current web site performance, and improve as we move forward into the future will require an attitude which is open to change and new ideas. However, we must not lose sight of the primary aspects of the Search Algorithms which are Relevancy and Authority as these still have a significant impact on not only Organic results, but are also taken into consideration within the new additions to the Search Algorithms.

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