The Fluidity of Google Search Results
Google is making a significant change to its core search engine today. This change will result in your Google search results being more customized than they’ve ever been before.
The basis for the change is Google+. Google now plans to serve up results based on your connections: stories your friends have recommended, pages you’ve written, files you’ve uploaded, etc.
Mostly static search results are a thing of the past. They will now be fluid. Pages will flow in and out like the tide, an ever-changing “seascape” of search results.
TechCrunch reports in their article “Google Fuses Google+ Into Search – And There Are Bigger Changes Afoot”:
The short version is that Google search results are going to be automatically personalized (to a greater degree than they were already) for each user, with signals drawn from your Google+ Circles being used to highlight things your friends — or you, yourself — have shared. Any of these personalized matches will appear alongside ‘normal’ search results.
As you can see, social media and search engine results are merging. This is the continuing fulfillment of the prediction I made a year ago: that online businesses would shift their focus toward optimizing for social media instead of search engines alone.
Google+ is no longer just a place to post updates or hang out with friends; it now determines who sees your web sites in Google’s search results.
-Ryan M. Healy
