If you’ve explored Google+, whether from your personal account or the one you are using for your business, you’ve probably noticed the “What’s hot” button in the left-hand navigation. What is “What’s hot?” It’s another Google algorithm at work – selecting the most popular posts from across Google+ and compiling them into one place.

Currently, the “What’s hot” algorithm doesn’t take any personalization into account when displaying results. Although many of the posts may not be relevant to you, there are still the benefits of discovering new, interesting things and seeing what types of content are drawing everyone’s attention around the net.

That second point is important. The marketing benefits of getting your content featured as “hot” are great. You gain the potential of having your content seen, shared, and interacted with by the entire social network – even people who don’t have you in a circle. Being featured can definitely be considered a viral success. So, to appear in the feed, you must cater to user interests.

Google does not divulge what specific factors can push a piece of content into the “What’s hot” feed. However, a little observation and common sense indicate the piece has to have the makings of popularity. Nearly every single piece of hot content has an accompanying image and several comments. They also have lots of +1’s, as well as shares (although, these amounts may be skewed by appearing in the “What’s hot” feed – which will dramatically increase +1’s and shares just from sheer visibility).

By creating image based content that engages your users and invites a rapport with them, you increase your chances of appearing in the “What’s hot” feed. Monitor popular trends, and give your spin on it. As with all things SEO, quality content that considers the end user will win the day.

 There’s been a lot of buzz around Google+ and Facebook these last few days. Google+ recently made its social network available to the public and Facebook had its F8 conference touting the new features that will be rolling out.  Both Google+ and Facebook want to be the social media site that everyone goes to for social interaction. The real question is why?  It could be because they want to boast that they have the most visitors, but Facebook (see the Computerworld article) already won that title. Plus, it’s safe to say that neither Facebook nor Google+ is improving their social media site for that warm and fuzzy feeling.  So what’s the real reason? It could be that by reaching out to people, they are both competing for the attention of businesses and their advertising dollars.

Facebook and Google+ know that companies will pay top dollar to reach their target audience. Businesses already pay to reach their target audience, so what’s the big deal?  The social media sites can use data and information to predict a user’s actions.
According to an article on CNET, Facebook’s  “algorithm can determine what you’re likely to like based on who you like, what you do, where you go, which apps you use (and how), and so forth–all of which is information that Facebook will now collect through its own service and all the apps that are being built to run on it.”   This is a game changer.

It means that Facebook and Google+ (at a later date) can help corporations pinpoint people who should be in their target audience based on their social behavior.  This makes advertising dollars even more valuable.  In the past people’s profile information, their interests and their “likes” determined which ads would be relevant.  Now, their actual behavior and interactions will be watched and ads will be served based on those actions. Its one thing for a social media site to say a user is interested in country songs based on their status; it’s another thing to say that they listen to the song “Sweet Home Alabama” once a week.  By collecting and providing more valuable data, a social media site can make itself of greater worth to advertisers. In fact, it can help advertisers adjust their strategy based on the data received.  According to CNET, if this works, “Facebook is on its way to becoming the source of the most valuable information on the Web: who likes what, who they influence, and how to reach the people most likely to influence others (hint: go through their friends).”

It’s no wonder that Facebook and Google+ continue to attempt to out-do each other. In the end, it adds up to greater revenue for both companies.

Relatively speaking, Google’s +1 button is a new feature in search. However, it has already begun to affect searches in a big way. So much so, people have been trying to make, sadly, an unscrupulous business out of it.

Lately, sites have been springing up that offer to sell +1’s for your website. For a fee, you can get any where from 50 to several thousand unique clicks for the +1 button on your site – a practice which goes directly against Google’s quality guidelines. In the biz, its something we refer to as “back hat SEO.”

While tactics like this may be tempting, and can even provide some short term benefit, they can become detrimental or disastrous in the long run. In the case of buying +1’s for your site, there can be a number of ill-effects.

You may receive a penalization at a later date – Google prides itself on providing quality search results, and it doesn’t take kindly to those who try to game the system. If future algorithms can detect your purchased +1’s, you will have wasted your money and seriously harmed your website’s ranking in Google search.

It’s a spamming technique, and lowers quality – Consider what the +1 button is: a relevancy indicator to enhance social search. By paying a few hundred unrelated, non-relevant users to +1 your site, you can hurt your ranking in the long term and obscure your brand’s overall message to consumers.

It can mess up your analytics – The “audience report” in Google Analytics tells you the demographic and geographic information about users who’ve +1’d the pages on your site. It’s a great way to learn about your audience so you can cater to them better. Paying for a large amount of unnatural +1’s will skew this data and ruin your chances to find and target your actual, converting audience.

All of these negative aspects have the potential to harm your site. For long term success, you should always follow the best practices guidelines and stick to “white hat” SEO techniques.

Lately, there’s been a lot of buzz around Google+.  Some people are predicting that Google+ will give Facebook a run for their money; while others say that Google+ is no threat to Facebook.  Either way businesses should be aware of how Google+ works and how they can use this new social platform to their benefit.

As it stands right now, Google+ is focused primarily on individual users. It seems they want to establish an audience of individual users before opening up their platform to businesses and marketers. However, Google+ recently allowed businesses to sign up for a corporate account beta. There was such an overwhelming response that Google will have to sift through the applications to determine which companies will actually get to participate in the beta.  Outside of the corporate account beta, there is no word yet, as to when and how businesses will be able to market their products and/or services to individuals with a Google+ account.

Google+ is similar to Facebook because it allows users to share their thoughts, photos, videos, etc with friends. However, Google+ has circles which allows users to choose which group of friends and/or associates they want to share information with. For example: let’s say Jane is friends with her parents, her boss and her weekend buddies on Google +. Over the weekend she goes camping with her family. She can share all her pictures with her parents, along with any sentimental thoughts, and not include her bosses or her weekend buddies. On the same note, she can send her weekend buddies a goofy picture of her and her mom, along with a note that says, “you know how my mom is” without her parents or her boss knowing. This could be a true benefit for advertisers, once Google+ opens up the door to them. If a person has more than one circle of friends, then this could mean that there are greater opportunities for advertisers to segment their message.  Other features on Google+ such as Hangouts, Sparks and Huddle may also present an open door for marketers and businesses to reach Google+ users.

Right now, there’s a lot of speculation about what to expect from Google+, especially since it is still in beta.  As Google+ unfolds, it should be interesting to see how companies and marketers can use this social platform to reach their target audience.

Every time I write a post about a Google search update, it is always focused around things Google is doing to improve the way users can find relevant content quickly and easily.  This post is no different.  Just a few days ago, Google began rolling out an update that is taking social search  to a new level. There have been many updates over the last few years in an effort to unite social and search, and we can only assume many more updates will come with the growing popularity of social media. 

With this most recent update, if you are logged into your Google Account you may begin to see listings shared by your connections within the organic search results. (In the past, data from social connections was limited to the bottom of the search results.) These new social listings will be denoted with an additional line added to the listing, telling you which of your connections shared the link. As the image found in this Search Engine Land post shows, the listings from social connections are often given a higher importance.

This seems to make sense in that if one of your friends has shared a link related to your specific search term, you would likely be more interested in that link instead of one that does not have an “endorsement” by a friend or connection.  Keep in mind that any listings as a result of this social search update will be specific to you (as your connections are going to be different than the next person looking for something similar). Google has access to tons of information on the web and these social search results can be pulled from your connections on sites such as Twitter, Flickr, FriendFeed, Picasa, Gmail, your Google Contacts, etc.

Other things to keep in mind are that you must have your social accounts connected to your Google Account.  If you don’t link your social accounts in any way to your Google account, or if you are not logged in to your Google Account, you will not see these social search listings.  Google will even assist you in connecting your social accounts if they find accounts that are specific to you (such as through the same usernames, etc). This way you can then easily link them to your Google Account.

There is a way to currently see who you are connected to through Google’s social circle page.  You can build these connections by associating your social accounts with your Google Account as mentioned above.  It will be interesting to see how this change to search results influenced by social media will evolve over time.

Is there such a thing as social media privacy? Just weeks after Facebook announces that they have gone public with their user’s personal information, Google announced the launch of real-time web and personalized search queries. Google’s new search functionality will allow anyone looking for information, news or events to see live updates in real-time. Users can now view live public social media messages and have an insight into live breaking news the moment it happens. Google’s launch of real-time search engine results is anticipated to have a significant impact on the social media marketing industry. This new development may have both a negative and positive impact on social media users. This new real-time feature may improve the results of social media campaigns and efforts, by allowing user’s news and events to be published within Google’s search results. Companies will now be able to achieve more consumer engagement and drive more traffic to their websites. This move toward sharing more personal information is enticing for companies with Twitter, Google and Facebook profiles. It is a great incentive for companies to invest more time and effort into their social media efforts and gain more exposure. It is hazy as to whether or not consumers will see the value in sharing their personal information with more than just their friends, but with everyone online.

(Screenshot of Google’s real-time news feed)

Pessimists believe that the new Google real-time feature may be opening a Pandora’s Box, by allowing spammers to get their foot in the Google search door. No one knows whether or not social media users will continue to participate in social media efforts knowing that their news will now go public. Before consumers make up their mind on the new social media circumstances, businesses should take full advantage of social media efforts while the iron is hot. This could be a very beneficial attribute that will allow businesses to gain more targeted publicity.