We talked about how social messages and information weren’t being used to their full potential. To experience a fully joined up web, we argued, there needed to be a major player with access to the same kind of social intelligence as Facebook to join up the dots between the online world and the real world. There was no doubt about who that global player was – If Facebook wasn’t going to give Google access to its API, then Google would need a social network of its own.

Cue mid 2011 and the launch of Google+, the search giant’s first ‘proper’ foray into the world of social networking. The initial reception was strong. Google had cleverly capitalised on the failings of its big brother – circles allowed you to selectively share content, rather than being forced into sharing ‘en masse’; security settings were transparent and geared toward privacy, rather than open-ness, and the interface was clean and a departure from Facebook’s sometimes cluttered interface. Despite the initial flurry of early adopters, however, sign-ups slowed to a crawl.

 It’s easy to see, then, why the latest announcement from Google, Search, plus Your World is being taken so seriously by marketers and SEOs. By seamlessly weaving in Google+ pages and information with its everyday search results, Google is effectively offering a true social search experience – albeit one that is geared almost exclusively toward its own social network.

What this means for businesses and search is potentially huge. If you own a Chinese restaurant in Birmingham, for example, and have optimised your site to appear for the keywords ‘Chinese restaurants in Birmingham’, there’s every possibility that one of your competitors (who previously appeared below you is search results for that keyword) would trump you in the search stakes because they have a Google+ page that has been linked to by one of the searcher’s connections on Google+.

This is a dramatised example to demonstrate how not having a presence on Google+ could affect search positions in the future – we don’t know, for example, how much weight Google would actually give to the recommendation of a connection on Google+ as opposed to a well optimised and high authority page without a Google+ profile. What it does show is the possible impact it could have, and why SEOs and marketers need to start testing and factoring it in to their strategies now – after all, we all remember the Google Panda update!