We already noticed in July that there were Google Plus posts (public ones) showing up in the SERPS. Now Google has made it official: the latest update to Google Social Search are Public Google+ Posts. Google announced this on their blog.
You can now see results being accompanied by “NAME shared this on Google+”. So this is not direct content from Google+, but shared links through Google+.
On Searchengineland Danny Sullivan rightfully noted that it seemed as if this feature had been here for a while. It hasn’t according to Google’s Sagar Kamdar who told Sullivan:
“It started rollout today. What you saw earlier was a feature that has been around for a while. If you add any URLs in the Links section of your Google Profile we may show an annotation to any of people that have added you to their Circles or yourself if you search for content and we believe the annotation is relevant. Starting today and rolling out over the coming days the links you publicly share on G+ will be visible to yourself and people that have added you to their Circles on G+.”
In the past the links on your Google Profile might have been showing up as being shared through Plus.
What is also interesting is the little note Sullivan makes:
“NOTE: Google tells me that it also follows links from those profile links. So if Ford links to its Flickr account (as it does), and the Flickr account links to Ford.com (as it does), then that’s another reason why you’d see Ford.com as something that Ford had “shared.””
Slowly but surely Google is integrating stuff. Google+ postings are becoming not just important for you social activity, but also for your rankings.
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