Now that the furor has died down some over Search Plus, let’s talk about it.

What is it? Google says:

We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction…

Pay particular attention to the fact that they specifically said “another big step”. Not THE step. Not FIRST step.

This is significant but not life-altering, not if you’ve been integrating social into your overall plans. Even if you haven’t ever been to Google+ or started a profile yet, it’s not over for you and your site, because this race will not go only to the swiftest.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t get on the ball though.

Of course there are some who think Search Plus is no big whoop:

The average Joe is still on Facebook. And my prediction is they’re going to stay on Facebook.

After someone publishes content, and puts forth the effort on Google+ to get it ranked, the average non-techie reader is more likely to go and share that content on Facebook.

That’s not a bad thing, of course. It will get you the exposure you desire. But I don’t think Google+ has advanced their standing as a mainstream social network here.

Well, I partly agree with them – Google going social itself? IS a big so-what.

Not for the reasons in the article though. I’ll be back to that in a minute.

Here’s the point you need to really think about.

My wildy theoretical speciulation is that the Google+ element of this news is just a Kansas City shuffle (“A Kansas City Shuffle is when everybody looks right, you go left. “) Maybe Google is being intentional with its misdirection, as they did back when they launched Google Social Search on a known Apple Product launch day.

The Two Reasons The Google+ Component Is a Big So What

1- It’s old news.

They’ve been going social for 2 years. This is just another step in a huge plan – if you were at our Google 2011 Webinar last year you remember our various discussions about Google in social, and Google social search.

Chris Lang has been telling us about the changes we were going to see over at Google in the social space since 2008 at least.

My point is, this is part of a metamorphosis, not some huge leap forward. It looks that way because it’s a significant design change. But it’s just a further implementation of something that was already in progress.

Personal results, profiles in search, people and pages? Already existed. Google’s first moves towards search included much of this. What changed was the priority, and to an extent, the sources.

If you’ve been following along so far, you’re gonna be fine, just continue to pay attention. If not, I suggest you go back and look at the repeated themes about Google social search in the news over the past few years.

Especially if you lost footing during the last round of Google algorithm updates.

2- I know I keep bringing up this point. But this update really isn’t about G+. It’s about what the updates impacts for most businesses, and that’s your overall Google strategy.

What is Search Plus Really About? SEARCH. Not Plus.

Google has brought the search engine back to the forefront, even though it looks like it’s pushing Google+ to the forefront. What is driving the new push of Google+ though? Google search.

It’s a statement, intentional or not: you have to care about our side mission (Google+) if you care about your organic Google search rankings.

The enhancement to Google’s search, whether it’s a bug or a feature, has only one bit of relevance, how it will affect your business. Focus on that point and everything else will be clear.

Part of the reason we build custom solutions for businesses is that there isn’t one blanket strategy for every business. Should G+ be part of your strategy? It’s too soon to be 100% sure where it fits, there isn’t enough data.

Does that mean don’t create an account and tinker around? Of course not. Just don’t make that your main focus – focus on perfecting what’s already working for you before you change the direction.

Kids of conversation © by Kris Hoet

I’m amused by Google’s fumbling around the social space. Some times when they get it right, they turn around and kill good progress elsewhere.

And sometimes they seem like they’re starting to get it right consistently, as some would say they are with Google Plus.

I believe they’re on the right track but like any other network, I want to study it for a year before I let the leash off my cautious optimism, after whatever initial prognostication and reactions I have.

But because they’re Google, everyone is so busy looking at the latest statistics measuring how fast or slow Google+ is growing – or not. Few are examining the value of the platform itself, apart from the Business Pages.

Google’s  Like a New Blogger In That Way

Google!! © by billibala

This isn’t a post about whether or not Google will survive in the social space, but its toil in the space is relevant to the discussion – don’t they remind you of a fledgling business blogger?

I remember what it was like for me – and I had a small audience back then already, but it was no less frustrating.

I had all the data structured in a way that’s appetizing to search engines but tailored to humans. All I did was write passionate posts that I thought people would find useful to read, and want to link to, and let the blog software bear the burden of optimizing.

Yeah, I paid attention to titles, tags, and did as much linking as I could myself. And I employed every ethical technique I knew of to get people to come to my site and stay.

(And yeah, this one time, I tied a person to a chair. Allegedly. Which is not as ethical. But it’s not like I got caught or anything. Okay that never happened. Checking to see if you were with me or just skimming.)

But what ultimately got me from 10 visitors a day to as high as 10k once in a blue moon was creating content I thought my target audience would love. Because then they responded.

Commentary to Conversation

Wide Audience View © by heresiarchic

What I couldn’t figure out at the time, in those early ten-visitor-a-day times, was how to get people to go beyond simple responses.

Isn’t it funny that Google has that down now? The one thing I see on Google Plus that I don’t see as much on Twitter anymore (space/time limitations) or on Facebook (built more for commentary than discourse) is true conversation.

Someone sparks it, and people go back and forth at length, not just with the author but which each other, then off on tangents and back to the point. Like someone poured chatter fertilizer on Google Groups.

And to some? That’s still failure. Because people aren’t talking enough.

Why isn’t commenting enough? What’s the key difference between commentary and conversation? We’ll talk about that next.

Theoretically the action of shutting down some services and folding others into newer platforms makes sense. But the application of some of these puzzles me – some appear illogical. Others appear to be vague.

Here’s an example:

Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.

via Official Google Blog: A fall sweep.

Okay. First – what are you talking about? Not everyone knows every feature that was rolled out in iGoogle.

Second, why remove the features instead of making them part of the Google+ platform? Is it because few people use them? If that’s true, could it be due to the fact that few people knew about them? Are you killing useful features due to a marketing failure? How does it affect the long term trust of your audience if you develop a record of discarding tools?

Wouldn’t they learn not to invest time in using and loving things you build, regardless of the “Beta” or “Lab” label, because you’re teaching them through your behavior that you aren’t to be relied on? Isn’t that the opposite of what you want when you’re trying to build a social network, tool, or any type of software that you want to become central to people’s lives?

I wouldn’t have signed up for Gmail if it came out today. Because I’d be too afraid that I’d grow to depend on it and it would be discontinued.

Another is Google Buzz, which I didn’t care about at first- until I remembered how much my Google reader friends help me find and spread news.

These folks  mostly came as a result of Google Buzz integration.

Will the people who are Google Buzz friends become Google+ friends? Literally, yes, of course. From a technical standpoint, if they want to continue using all of this stuff, yes.

I’m more thinking of the people I dragged kicking and screaming into Google Reader, people who aren’t techies, who are writers, who grew to love it, who were using that ONE tool to congregate around an idea. People it was easy to interact with over in Google Reader who I didn’t have to group on the profile I was using. Several hundred people per profile who I now have to manually organize as a sub-set of — that’s a whole other post.

Let’s just say for now that it’s not an easy transition.

I think it would be smart if they could find a way to make those people into a private, pending circle automatically.

I know I can ask them to join a circle. I know I can manually do it. But it doesn’t make sense to me that settings don’t migrate.

Unless you grouped those folks rather than share your updates to Google Reader in public, there’s no pre-configured, automated way to migrate them over. And if it was just this one time on this one Google product, that would make sense. But people who are not techies see Google as one big system and wonder why it doesn’t talk to itself.

For some of them, this is their 3rd move-by-faith with Google. And they’re running OUT of faith.

There’s a long, labor-intensive and ridiculously complex way to do this that I’ll wrote about shortly. It seems like there should be a simple resolution to this that can happen in the background.

In the mean time,  here’s the message I left for the gentleman who wrote the blog post, Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of “Product” at Google, on his G+ profile, where he also shared the news of certain Google products retiring:

Is there a way to turn my Google Buzz friends into a circle?

I’m asking because although I didn’t use Buzz much itself, the Buzz features that are tied into Google Reader were actually helpful to me.

I’d like to maintain those connections without having to start over again. Right now I’m manually turning them into a contact group, then importing them to Google+, but it seems weird to me to have to go to Google Reader to export my Google Buzz contacts to Google contacts  so I can import them to Google+ — shouldn’t there be a software solution to this?

 

You can also go to the page of the announcement left in GMail this morning and leave a Google sidewiki comment, whether or not you have the Google Toolbar enabled. If you’re using Google+ there’s also a +1 button on the same row as the comment button.

If you have a free moment, browse a few pages of the comments. It’s surprising how many people are asking to keep Buzz. And they’re not techie folks either.

How about that.

I’ll level with you. On a personal level, I’m nuts about Google+.

Launched on June 28, 2011 to a test crowd, and later released to the public on July 31, 2011, Google+ is, according to Google:

Real-life sharing, brought to the web.

To date, I’ve

• met dozens of wonderful people through lively discussions,
• re-connected to my best friend, who is utterly un-tech-savvy, through Google Hangouts,
• re-connected to several friends from college who I couldn’t quite link up with on Facebook,
• seen five new customers and clients directly from Google+, and
• spent quite a bit of leisure time just hanging out playing games.

But for business, I can’t share in the worship of Google+, nor the condemnation. It’s far too soon to say whether or not it is the Second Coming of Social Media, an absolute failure or anything in-between.

Since Google has announced that

1. Google+ is not finished, and,
2. Google+ is going to have a specific plan for businesses that want to use it,

I would feel like either an opportunist or a fool trying to tell you how to use Google+ for business when even Google says you’re not supposed to be using Google+ as a business yet.

(Though apparently it will be available for all businesses much sooner than expected.)

The only reason to advise you on how to use Google+ for business before this revelation would be to make money off the ignorance of others. The time will come to show a true business case for Google+ soon enough. At the same time, though, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t help inform you about Google+ at all.

So, instead, I’m seeking to paint a fuller picture of Google+ for you, including resources and alternate views. That’s what this and the next few posts will be about.

In case you haven’t had a chance to play around with Google+, it’s now open to the public, supposedly. (If you have a problem getting in, let me know. I have about 50 invites left from my 150.) Whether you have or not, hopefully something in this list of resources will help you learn how to use it.

Google+ How To Resources

• Google+ Official Guide
• There’s a Google+ manual created by the user community that you can help edit.
• SocialFish has created an introductory tutorial for Google+.
• I did a Google+ Walkthrough on my AskTinu site.
• In the lower right hand of every page in Google+ is a Feedback button that plugs into Google Feedeback, which is actually available for use with any Google product. Google provides a link teaching you how to use Google Feedback.
• 15 Tips for Google+ Newbies
• Mashable’s Google+ Section
• Everything BNET Things You Need to Know About Google+
• Visual Learner? Here are the 6 Top Slideshows on Google+ According to Slideshare

Additional Google+ Resources

• There’s a rumor going around that there are few women on Google+. If you want to find some, the site Women of Google Plus is a great place to start.
• One flaw of Google+ is that it doesn’t have a good bookmarking system – when you +1 things within Google+, they don’t show up on your +1 list. You can create a private circle to share with just yourself, but it gets hairy, plus it shows up on your view of your profile. Instead, you could follow these instructions through Evernote to save your favorite Google+ posts.
• You can also make a feed of your Google Plus profile posts.
• Google Plus Today is a podcast about Google+ available now on iTunes.
• There are many lists of people you can find on Google+, including people who work at Google, and SEO Professionals

I occasionally make posts about Google+ on my own profile, but no more than once a day. Feel free to add me, so long as you’re willing to talk about things other than work and the Google+ platform.

Next time: Alternate Views on Google+ : Google+ Pluses and Minuses. For now, enjoy what Google has to say about Google+ for Business.

http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=150415

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/blogs/gear-up/bing-grabs-30-percent-of-online-searches-at-googles-expense-20110418

http://www.pcworld.com/article/225368/why_google_doesnt_want_the_iphone_to_die.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/8459137/Google-Android-confirms-smartphone-dominance.html

http://searchengineland.com/7-google-quality-score-ppc-myths-73336

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/04/the-layered-look-how-google-news-is-integrating-the-social-web/