After extensive research into the social media platform, and its addition of Google+ company pages, we’re not quite ready to adopt what appears to be a somewhat cumbersome and “glitchy” administrator and user experience. That’s not to say we’re ignoring it completely. It still has profound effects on Google’s overall search results.

Late last year, Google announced it would be changing its search algorithm to give Google+ results priority in search results for users who have created their own Google+ accounts. Basically the search would determine relevancy of results based on your interests, and those shared by people in your “circles.”

In theory, if you have a Google+ account and you search for “Sofa Upholstery,” the results pick up whether your friends on the network have mentioned anything about sofa upholstery on their accounts and return those relevant results first. While this may sound like a great way to propagate a brand and narrow the 6 degrees of separation–say– down to four or five, the process of administering company pages has not reached the point of full reliability or ease of use.

As an example, only one Google+ account can be associated with a company page. If you want multiple people to post to the company page, you have to provide them with your own Google username and password, or create a new account specific to your company. That may sound easy enough, but handing out a username and password to everyone who wants to update content leaves you open to malicious attacks and a vast lack of control over security.

Therefore, until Google updates their current Google+ functionality and includes what we believe are crucial administration options, we suggest avoiding the social media platform for now.

The Marion Group will follow Google’s progress, as well as continue to develop a social media marketing strategy that can be applied to Google+ in the future.

Let’s review the latest nip/tucks from Google…

Google Places: Now Infused with Hotpot

Introduced in November 2010, Google Hotpot offers recommendation to Google Search results. So when you’re looking for spicy Indian cuisine or the a the best place to get Precious Moments figurines, Hotpot displays a list of local places along with inline user reviews. Now this service is dropping its name and has been added to Google Places, which only makes sense. That’s probably where it should have started. Now through Google, you can rate businesses, be rated and make and receive recommendations, all while using the same profile. I too have grown tired of creating so many derivatives of my name. I draw the line at mizzIHEARTthaBIEBER97.

What this means for you? Well, Google isn’t saying. But what we do know is that you can never have too many positive reviews. Click here to find out how to encourage fawning fan feedback.

Google Ads Become More Transparent

I’m sure you’ve noticed changes to Google Search with “Google Instant” and “Google Instant Previews,” where Google returns results as you type with a graphic overview of each result. (Just click that little magnified glass.) Google has now applied the same technology to pay per click ads (PPC).  Read Google Instant Previews for Ads.

What this means for you? Now would be a good time to review (and revise if need be) your SEO strategy, at least for your landing page. Not sure how to tell if your site is optimized? Marion’s SEO Checker will help.

Although Google affirmed previews will not be considered in their decision-making algorithm, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Since the search process has been condensed, it’s more important than ever to ensure you’re using the right keywords and messaging to grab the attention of users.

Also, insist that your homepage is preview-friendly. In other words, you want it to be appealing because an unprofessional or dare-I-say flat out ugly landing page will probably repel more users than it attracts. Give your site a facelift with a custom web design.

Google Offers Google Offers

After Google’s unprecedented six billion dollar bid to acquire Groupon was rejected, Google found a new love to partner with…itself. Google introduced, Google Offers, their answer to daily deals, which is slowly hitting the mainstream.

What does this mean for you? Nothing…for now. Google is testing the service in Portland, Oregon with no word when they’re going to branch out to the rest of us.

Dinner +1

Google is rolling out +1, a feature similar to Facebook’s Like button…in fact it’s exactly like Facebook’s Like Button. The +1 button allows users to recommended different venues, recipes or even shoe repair stores for your friends to see as soon as they search for the related keywords. It’s available through Google Search at the moment, but the plan is for publishers to start adding the +1 button to their websites, and there’s no telling where Google is going to go from there.

What does this mean for you? It’s not clear that getting someone to +1 your site counts as a positive review. I would say so. While it’s still in the testing phase, Google has yet to integrate the results from this service into their complex algorithm, however we know Google and we can bet it’s not going to be too long, granted enough people choose to +1, +1.  (Word of advice, get on the +1 bandwagon now. You don’t want to be the last.)

Buzz-ectomy

And finally, in non-Google related news, Marion gives our condolences to Yahoo for its shutdown of Yahoo! Buzz. Launched in 2008, the sun set on Yahoo! Buzz, the community-based news site. In its two year life span, the site never really gripped the public and thus it ends. O, Yahoo! Buzz, we hardly knew thee.

Here’s a special treat for you and Marion. We’ve invited a special guest, Ryan Boots, to give his take on the Google/Facebook dichotomy.

(Just in case you hadn’t heard the word: Google and Facebook are totally not BFFs.) Take it away Ryan in Boots.

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Search marketers are or should be accustomed to change, even radical change, in the industry. But even by the rapid pace of the search industry, the last two weeks have seen a major upheaval. There’s no other way to put it: it’s all-out war between Google and Facebook.

What Happened?

Many observers have kept an eye on Facebook since the social networking site’s rise to dominance. In the space of less than five years, the site has radically changed the way people use the Internet, especially in how they communicate with and relate to one another.

There’s no denying the site has generated a lot of disruption for Google. The search giant’s system of delivering search results relies heavily on backlinks, or links among various pages, to determine the relevance of pages to search queries. Prior to Facebook, Internet users might have used forums or blogs to compare notes and exchange information, which suited Google fine as those sites tended to be publicly accessible.

The social web threw a wrench in the gears. Users began to take that same online conversation, and its attendant linking behavior, to the walled garden of Facebook. Because many people keep their profiles partially or entirely blocked from search, Google’s overall picture of the Internet began developing some pretty serious blind spots. Add in the shenanigans from shady SEO companies, and Google’s vaunted search quality began to suffer.

When it became clear Google wasn’t going to get access to Facebook user data, Google attempted to fight back with its own social networking features. These have mostly failed rather publicly: Orkut is unknown outside of Brazil and India, Wave was basically ignored, Buzz was a PR backfire, and the jury is still out on the +1 button.

Forget the Guns – Switching to Missiles

Following months of rumors that it would launch a competing social network, Google has gone from firing shots across Facebook’s bow to an all-out assault with the June 28 launch of Google+. Plenty has already been written on the subject – I especially like Danny Sullivan’s take over at Search Engine Land – but there are some additional wrinkles to consider for the sake of context.

In particular, Google’s contract with Twitter ran out on July 4, meaning Google Realtime Search essentially vanished over the 4th of July weekend. In a statement to Sullivan, Google says that Realtime Search will be back at some point, but: “Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.” In other words, they see Google+ being their replacement for Twitter’s data streams.

That may already be already happening, according to an experiment by SEOmoz. Short version on their findings: tweets still impact rankings (though apparently not as much) and Google+ isn’t as fast as Twitter for producing real-time search results. However, what is of greatest interest to us SEOs is that, according to SEOmoz’s experiment, Google+ is already impacting organic search results.

So it’s all-out war between the world’s two hottest Internet companies, complete with an arms race. Last Wednesday Facebook announced integration of video chatting functionality from Skype, which was acquired by Microsoft a few months ago. Also last Wednesday, Bing announced an alliance with Baidu, China’s leading search engine, to deliver English-based searches in China.

One major wildcard in this could be the FTC probe of Google. The company took an enormous risk launching Google+ after the probe was underway, and if the Feds decide Google+ is just too much influence for the search giant to have, all bets are off.

The Road from Here?

The primary lesson we’re taking away from this radically altered (and still changing) landscape is that social and search not only can work together, they must work together for mutual success. That genie is out of the bottle and isn’t going back in, so taking some sort of wait-and-see stance to see how things shake out with Google vs. Bing/Facebook simply isn’t a viable strategy. If anything, social media activities for the benefit of both engagement with the market and organic optimization just became even more vital. We had robust activities in place before this latest escalation by Google, and those efforts are continuing if not accelerating.

And since one hand washes the other, we are crafting our site content to help facilitate our social media efforts. As we develop new content for our various web properties, we’re taking great pains to make that content sharable and, more importantly, worth sharing. From our standpoint, if it’s worth sharing, it’s more likely to get organic traction.

No social SEO strategy should be predicated on simply doing social media for its own sake. Nor are we restricting ourselves to any particular medium – we blog, we monitor Twitter closely, and we’re hardly about to pull the plug on our Facebook accounts. We feel strongly that communicating meaningfully and effectively with our current and potential customers is the best way to proceed, regardless of how the Google-Facebook War of 2011 comes to a head.

 Ryan Boots is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist for Spark Energy.

That brings us to the next option of using a photograph of yourself or one of your employees. Statistics show that people tend to click more on banners depicting human faces than anything else, and that’s probably even more applicable on social media networks. However, using a photograph has the limiting effect of associating your brand with a single person. To prevent this, consider alternating images of several of your employees.

The good news is that there is a middle ground: create a corporate branded avatar that is a combination of a human face combined with a corporate logo. Not only is this fun, but reinforces your brand and reminds your customers that they are interacting with actual company staff members. After all, who’d want to hold a conversation with the Nike swoosh?

Want to see this in action? Visit our Facebook and Twitter pages, and let us know what you think.

For a customized Google Map, follow these steps:

• Go to Google’s Homepage at www.google.com
• Click on the Maps tab.
• Click on My Maps.
• Click on Get Started.
• Log in by using an existing Google user name and password or create a new account.
• Click on Create New Map.
• Title your map and give a brief description. You can choose between creating a public listing or an unlisted listing. By creating a public listing, anyone searching Google can see it.
• Click Save.
• Now you can begin creating your custom map!
• Zoom on the map to find your exact location and click the blue balloon to place a marker at that spot.
• Once you have a marker, you can give it a title (e.g. Office – Northside) and then give a brief description (e.g. Address, Telephone, Email, and Office Hours).
• Click OK to save that marker.
• Continue this process until you have created all of the markers you need.
• Tired of the blue balloons? Well add your own logo! While creating your marker click on the blue balloon and click Add an Icon. Then you can input a URL that has your logo.
• Make sure to Save! Now you have created your very own Google map.

Don’t forget to add this map to your website. If you currently have a Contact Us page, you can upload this map and use it as a tool for your customers to easily locate the closest branch to them without ever leaving your site!

Looking for even more customization? Talk to the amazing and talented people at The Marion Group for all of your web design needs.