Google “Search Plus Your World” feature goes live

Google has enacted big changes that should dramatically affect search ranking results and certainly get the SEO community up in arms. Google's new feature “Search Plus Your World” was launched today, and many users have already experienced the differences. Some pros in the SEO community are beginning to question how much the new feature favors Google+.

Signed Out Users Seeing Google+ Suggestions Offered

Search Engine Land reported that Google+ data has been offered even when signed out of the account. Originally, we figured the changes to the search results pages would be for logged in users only. This is quite a surprising change that may show just how profound of a change the “Search Plus Your World” feature may be for SEO.

New additions to search

• Search for photos shared with you on Google+
• Receive photos uploaded by you and your connections as search result suggestions
• Google profiles may appear right as you type a name in search
• Google+ posts and comments that have been shared with you will now appear in your search results

Certainly, the availability of the content from Google+ will be determined by the visibility settings specified by the user who submitted that content. The visibility categories are:  1. Public 2. Extended circles 3. Limited and 4. Only you.  Google's new direction is heavily focused on the categorization of content, which will pave the way for new ways of personalization, creating recommendations and promoting engagement within the network.