Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Google+ is eating up the SERP



With Places being replaced by G+ Local over the past week, it's small businesses that are almost immediately forced into taking action.

Why? Subtle G+ links are starting to appear directly in the snippets of the businesses' official website results in the SERP - whether they like it or not.

But hey, what if the business had not yet bothered creating a page? No worries at all -- Google has automatically created one for you!!

In the case of Gelato Messina, a well-loved Sydney institution in Darlinghurst, Google is linking to one of these automagically created G+ pages (based on previous reviews on the now defunct Google Places platform). Furthermore, they will show you the 'Search Plus Your World' result on the right side of the results page, whilst relegating all other review sites like Urbanspoon and Eatability to the bottom portion of the page.

I'm fairly certain +Messina Gelato (which appears to be their official page) does not even know that this is going on right now. I will surely be looking on with keen interest on how this develops over the next few weeks.

Will businesses feel the need to come on board after completely freaking out from a test vanity search? Will they suck it up and rely on Facebook and Twitter to get the right information out? So many questions..

Originally posted on Google+.