Earlier this week Silverback Marketing discussed the release of one of Google’s newest tools Search plus Your World. This new search tool from Google focuses more on social search rather than typical content related search. Google aims to take search in a new direction and deliver a search experience that truly relates to each separate individual. Google competitors such as Twitter have responded to the release of Search plus Your World, claiming this service will actually make it more difficult to find content on Google that was originally posted on other services such as Twitter and Facebook.
Regardless of what position you take in regards to your feelings about this new service from Google, there is no denying Search plus Your World has created an online buzz. Much of this buzz has to do with whether Facebook and Twitter will ever allow Google to access data from those social mediums to incorporate the data in Google search results. Twitter ceased the real-time search agreement it had with Google back in July 2011. Therefore, there is some odd irony that Twitter was the first social network to really publicly voice opposition to the release of Search plus Your World.
There is one very distinct point to consider when forming an opinion about Google’s Search plus Your World. If Twitter and other services begin to publicly complain that Google is engaging in activity that creates the necessity for government regulators to step in and investigate the company, then isn’t that the exact same type of activity these same companies plus others like LinkedIn and Amazon are crying foul over in regards to the Stop Online Piracy Act? The fact is that it may be somewhat hypocritical to express concern over SOPA one moment before engaging in similar behavior when a competitor is doing something to improve its own service, an improvement that may have a negative impact on the company crying foul.
There is no reason to believe Google has any intention of eliminating Search plus Your World because of the feelings of Twitter and other companies and individuals. The best thing to do right now if there is concern about the service is simply to use the toggle bar on Search plus Your World and turn the service off, allowing you to continue using Google search in the normal manner.
Have a great weekend!
AgentSEO – Jacob Stoops – Google Launches Search Plus Your World, Search Results Get More Personal
Blogstorm – Patrick Altoft – Thoughts on Google Search plus Your World
Econsultancy – Patricio Robles – Search, plus Your World: a sad day for tech, but not for the reason you think
John Battelle’s Searchblog – Jbat – Search, Plus Your World, As Long As It’s Our World
Search Engine Land – Greg Sterling – Google “Search Plus” Impact on Local: Limited So Far
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] Back on January 10 Google unveiled a new project to the online world by the name of Search plus Your World. This tool will integrate search results from the search you perform using Google with social media results from your friends. The process finds all those results at once and creates a search result that is specifically designed for each individual user. Critics of this new process claim this gives Google free rein to focus all the search results on posts and shares from its own social network Google+. Twitter was one of the first Google competitors to cry foul in regards to the whole process. [...]