In what’s only the latest indication that Google+ will be a factor in the search engine rankings, it seems that Google has started to deliver + results in its SERPs.
According to several sources, including All About Content, Google+ posts are showing up in searches for which there are Google+ pages, if those pages have been enabled for Direct Connect. (You can find out more about Direct Connect in our article, Google+ Launches Brand Pages ).
Roll-Out Still In Progress?
I haven’t seen this yet in South Africa, and I haven’t seen an official Google announcement about it yet,
but All About Content has screen shots showing a couple of examples, which include not only the usual link and site links, but also posts from the Google+ Page stream, and even a “Add to your circles” button.
I don’t know if it just hasn’t rolled out completely yet, or if it’s still in testing, or whether it’s just that South African websites haven’t enabled Direct Connect yet, but it sure looks like it’ll be a feature of search very soon.
Results Screen Real Estate At A Premium
We’ve already seen what local search results do to the SERPs real estate, and what the site links do. With another bunch of stuff added to the results, some SERPs are going to fit one result above the fold if you’re lucky.
Is this going to affect the value of first page results even more?
We’ll keep an eye on it and let you know.
Related Articles
* Google+ Launches Brand Pages
* Site Links
* Local Search Optimisation