At Netstarter we are keen to provide you with our view on what has been termed by some, as Google’s most radical transformation to date – ‘Search, plus your world’. We would suggest that universal search in 2007 was then, and still is, its most radical addition to the results it displays. To our mind, this is Google’s attempt to more effectively compete in the social sphere taking on the likes of Facebook. The idea is that your search results will include both private / social results, as well as the more traditional public results. It’s an extension of social search that was introduced in 2009.

We’re also amused that this news story has greatly shadowed this week’s Facebook launch showing ads in individuals’ news feeds. Or that its created so much interest when Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) have been working with Facebook on the same basic offering since February 2011.

The question is, how does it affect our customers, and what they need to do take advantage of it? A question I don’t think anyone can truly answer at this point in time. At the moment is hasn’t been rolled out to Australia and there is no indication of when it will be so there is no great urgency. In saying that it makes sense in the world of search to be prepared and be an early adopter as its this adopters that receive maximum benefit - search engines reward history and you’ll have more data to make informed decisions off of.

Google were very vocal in the rapid take up on Google+ but we are yet to understand how active people are in using it. I have created circles, invited individuals and have used the +1 button. That was when the functionality was first launched so as to better understand how it worked, but since then have remained inactive. In a quick Vox Pop I conducted today most of my digital marketing contacts have accounts that are inactive and have no plans on utilising them.

So what should our customers be doing?

• Not panic into knee jerk actions
• Place social share buttons including +1 on their home and high volume pages
• Create a Google +1 business account
• Use Google Analytics to measure +1 traffic and conversion to better understand its affect

If +1 does really takes off we hope it means businesses need to become more transparent and trustworthy as it’s the business’s customers that will help: increase rankings, click through rates and propensity of others to buy their products and services.  

We will be creating our own Google +1 business account and will keep you abreast or how this service is being received and utilised in countries where it is currently active.