A brief description of Google+, its features and its impacts on SERP. Google+ was launched on June 28, 2011 with a private beta and in the first month gained more than 40 million users. It is a continuosly developing social network, more and more intergrated with other Google products. But the most important impact of Google+ is on SERP, influencing results thanks to Social Search and Search Plus Your World functions.

1. Google Plus
Alessia Turlon – May 2012

2. Google+
“Real-life sharing
rethought for the web”
Launched
on 28th June 2011
+25 million users
in the 1st month
Rolled out Business Pages
on 7th November 2011
+100 million users
in the world in 2012

3. Plus of Google+
Start a conversation in real time with “Hangouts”, allowing brands
to engage users. Hangouts are video chats trying to replicate
gatherings in the real world
Segment users in “Circles” to spread targeted content.
Circles makes it easy to associate different people to different
categories, so you can share different things with different people
Consequently, you can see updates for particular circles rather than
updates for everyone in the “Stream”
“+1” give content a greater chance of dominating search results
than it did before, thanks to “Social Search” and “Plus Your World”
“Explore” allows you to see trending topics on Google+

4. What’s Hot on Google+
“See what everyone’s talking about”
(not considering segmentation with Circles)

5. Google+ Local
“Discover places with the help of people you know”
Google+ Local is a feature that allows users to share and find
information about nearby places thanks to their “Circles”,
but also it incorporates information such as scores, reviews and
summaries from Zagat
Tool rolled out in May 2012

6. Set Up a Google+ Page
1) Choose a Gmail Account (accessible to multiple members of the
marketing team)
2) Create a Page, filling in your basic information (page name,
Page
website URL, category, etc.)
3) Customize Your Public Profile (deleting pages not used and
using for website URL Google+ Direct Connect)
4) Promote Your Page (regularly share fresh content, react to
interactions, target posts, engage, use statistics, etc.)

7. G+ Pages DoS and DontS
• Pages can’t add people to Circles or mention them until the
page is added first or mentioned
• Pages automatically unfollow a user if that user unfollow them
• Pages can’t +1 other pages, nor can they +1 content on the web
• Pages can share content of a user from Explore, but it is needed
to open the URL in the post
• URLs can’t be personalized as they are now defined by a long
string of numbers

8. Hangouts
“We want to help you make the same kinds of
lasting connections with your customers
online the way you can in real life”
Linking your YouTube account allows you to broadcast your Hangout
live on your channel and to record it as a public video
(see Hangout On Air)

9. Third Party Tools to Manage G+

10. Google+ Analytics
Google+ Statistics All My +

11. Google+ Changes Search
Social Search Search, plus Your World
• Social Search is a type of • Search, plus Your World
expand the Social Search to
web search that takes into Personal Profiles and
account the Social Graph Business Pages, making
of the person searching social content more
the query influent
• Search, plus Your World
• Social Search was created expand the Social Search
to give users a more also to users searching not
relevant search among logged-in with their Google
friend generated content account
• With Search, plus Your
• Social Search uses Social World social (G+) and visual
Circles for displaying content (images and
results, indipendently by videos) is more visible
its natural ranking

12. Social Search
• In Social Circles we can find people indicated in our Google
Profile, contacts in GTalk and Google Reader
• Also, Social Search analyses all the people we follow on
different social networks (not Facebook). In this context Twitter
is the most relevant for the “trust” (e.g. mentions, favourites,
retweets, lists, following, follower, etc.)
• Finally, on a second level, we can find relevant content from all
the people followed by people we follow
• Sometime this kind of search is
connected in real-time displaying the
last post related to the result, so we
also visualise comments on it
• It is possible to put in our G+ Circles
people/business pages directly from
the SERP

13. Social Search for Pages and Posts
“People you ‘hang with’ is actually a ranking signal”
Business Pages Posts
• Authority of followers and • Number of +1, comments
users interacting with the and shares
Page • Authority of users sharing,
• Topics should be relevant giving a +1 or commenting
and associated to the main the post
theme of the Page • Topics should be relevant
• Quality of posts and associated to the main
• Circles where the Page is in theme of the Page
• Page optimisation (e.g. • Connection with the
description and links) searched query
• Integration with other • Keyword optimisation
social networks • Autoritativeness of the
Business Page

14. Search, Plus Your World
• Personal Results enable people to find personalised
information, such as Google+ photos and posts
• Profiles in Search enable people to immediately find other
people close to or interesting for following, both in
autocomplete and results
• People and Pages helps people find Google+ profiles and
pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, with the
possibility to follow them with just a few clicks
• Local enable people to see Zagat recommendations and
reviews pop up while doing a search

15. Google AuthorRank
“The identity of individual agents responsible for
content can be used to influence search rating”
Autorship is influenced by
REL = AUTHOR Shares, Comments, +1, Like,
RT; but also by who is
REL = ME engaged, how many times
and how users are engaged
• Business Pages and Profiles with Authorship will be displayed in
the firsts positions in SERP, from which they could be directly
added to Circles
• With the Authorship feature, now it is easier to make content
feel more personal
• Authorship not only has an impact on SERP, but also on YouTube
(if I share a video in G+, my friends will see it also on their
homepage in YouTube)

16. Google Plus +1
“People discover and share relevant content from the
people they already know and trust”
• +1 doesn’t directly share content to a user’s social
stream, but if in Search Results a content received a lot of
+1s it tends to be shown up in higher positioning with
details of +1 (even to not logged-in)
• +1 in websites recommend content across the web and
gives those sites a “stamp of approval”
• In Paid Search, with a single click people can recommend
ads’ landing pages to their friends (they are more
powerful when people can see friends having chosen to
endorse them)
• In SERP, if you are logged-in, you can +1 interesting
content with just one click

17. What’s in the Future for G+?
“We want to build a community based on
a sense of trust, and we will continue
to roll out new features and tools that
reinforce that that concept”
Avni Shah
Director of Product Management at Google

18. Thanks for Your Attention
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