With the miry of social networks out there, companies often have to pick and choose which ones to dedicate their time and attention to. It’s not the best strategy to post the same content on every single channel. It’s time consuming and redundant. When Google+ came on the scene last summer, many social media experts called it embarrassing and a waste of time.

Even though Google+ quickly grew to 40 million users in less than 90 days, it still was mocked as a ghost town. When talking about social networks with a friend of mine, he said, “When I want some alone time, I go on Google+.” The sarcasm felt so true as I’ve often neglected my Google+ profile and business page.

Pictures like the one below lamented how pitiful the user experience was on Google+

That’s all about to change though.
Google just announced it would begin to rank Google+ higher in organic search results. This long-awaited move means more personalization and SERP rankings rising due to increased activity in Google+

Cotton Delo writes in an article on Ad Age Daily, “The latest deployment, which pulls up Google+ content and is called “Search plus Your World,” will be rolled out over the next few weeks, but the degree of change in users’ search experience will depend on how avidly they use Google+.”

Now, what does this mean for brands?

While you will not notice changes overnight in your search results, in time you can expect that brands who are active on Google+ will show up sooner in search results. This is good news for those who are currently active on Google’s social network and an imperative for those who’ve been waiting to join to make the plunge now.

Twitter is in uproar about the announcement. Hours after Google’s public announcement, Twitter released this statement:

For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.

Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results.

We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

If Google gives precedence to only their social network in personalized search results, then expect to see Bing find ways to increase its partnership with Facebook and Twitter. Bing has already partnered with Facebook for social integration when a user is signed in to Facebook and they’ve been in mutual alliance with Twitter, so there could be a rise in social + search for Bing with these two channels while Google focuses solely on their own network.

Nevertheless, now is the time to join over 62 million other Google+ users and showcase your brand. Remember, for social media to be successful, it must stay social! While very few users come to Google+ to interact with brands, they have established a good community to develop thought leadership and an exchange of ideas. So, when you create your page, use it to interact with others.

See Google’s public release on “Search plus Your World” here:

Stay tuned for weekly blog articles on social media, web design, and marketing. New posts come out every Wednesday!