“S,up rankers. Another big week for Google, specifically Google+. There’s a story out today from Paul Allen and he’s got a post actually up on Google+. He said that Google+ will pass 10 million users today and that seems to be fairly accurate. He’s also made the extraordinary claim though, that 20 million users by the weekend for Google+. Paul Allen if you don’t know is the guy that founded ancestry.com so he’s a pretty sensible bloke. That’s an extraordinary number of users to have for a service that’s not even open to the public yet, it’s by limited invitation only and it hasn’t even been live for a fortnight. I’ve been spending a lot of time and logged a lot of hours on Google+ and it’s an extraordinary tool for a number of reasons and just for its pure usability. I guess I’m spending less time on Facebook and less time on Twitter for instance, I won’t fire up tweetdeck on here because it’ll grind my machine to a halt because there are so many updates coming through all the feeds that I follow. Really it’s like Brian Solis says, it’s the poker machine or the slot machine where you just see all the things wiz past. If you’re following any keyword searches on twitter like SEO for instance or even Google+, you can’t follow the windows on Twitter, it’s too hard. Then when you do see a tweet that you like and you try to find it in one of those windows it’s impossible because it’s already gone. Google+ handles that a lot better and threads things so you get a conversation like you would on Facebook for instance. I don’t want to get too much into the details of Google+ and how it works but there’s a number of things that make it work so well. Like this over here, it tells me notifications that I may have already on Google+ or people that have responded to things. I can then actually simply just reply straight within the environment of Gmail. The growth will probably be slower in Australia because, you know, I would say that the majority of Australians who are on Facebook probably don’t have Gmail accounts. I know that’s a big call and I have absolutely no evidence to support that except the people who have friended me on Facebook and certainly family and friends that I know certainly do not have a Gmail account. However 5 million Australians last year, accessed Youtube. Youtube is of course owned by Gmail and we already know that Google is tying Gmail accounts to Youtube blog ins so there will be a progression path there where they will try to get Youtube users onto Gmail accounts. I haven’t seen it but I’m sure they’re already promoting “Get a Gmail account” to people who access Youtube. If you want to leave a comment on a video on Youtube then of course you have to have a Youtube account and any new Youtube accounts will be linked to Google profiles. I think that’s where certainly in Australia, we’ll start to see real growth for Google+ because more Australians will have Gmail accounts.
So, what does that mean for SEO? Last week I told you about how content was getting ranked or how it looked like content was getting ranked in the sparks environment within Google+ and that was more to do with time sensitivity of content plus the sorts of likes and those sorts of things that have happened. Well, if we have a look at a post that I did last week, google+ and seo (this is just a quick search) you’ll see here the post is #1 and #2 but you’ll also see here that it says I shared this. I’ve also +1’d it and I’ll get to that in a second. The reason that it’s got this little bit of information here is that I’m currently logged into a Gmail account which is attached to this profile. Where did I share this? Well, I shared it on Twitter but I’m not currently logged into Twitter within this browser so Google knows that I’ve shared this because my Google profile is linked to my Twitter profile and it knows that I shared it on Twitter, still with me? If we go across to another browser and we do the same search you’ll see here that I shared it and I shared it, still with me? You will see this one is me and this one is also me, these are both connected to different Google profiles because, like a lot of people who got onto Google+ early I had several Gmail accounts and we’d never really used our Google profiles but now we had to. A lot of use went “now which one do I use” so I’ve settled on one main one which I’ll show you the URL for – http://+.jimboot.com. If you do get onto Google+. If we go back to this result here you’ll notice that it’s actually a different photograph. Yes, I do have 3 different Google accounts and these are all connected to different Google profiles and you’ll see this one here, I +1’d it and you’ll see this one here which is connected to the Gmail account that I’m logged into at the moment and is also connected to the same Twitter account saying that I shared it. What does that mean?
Well, if we go to another browser and we do the same search, you’ll see that we’ve only got the #1 position, we don’t have #1 and #2 and there are no little things saying that Jim Stewart’s shared this. All the sharing stuff does and the +1 stuff does is that it lets your network of contacts know that you have recommended this or liked this and if that happens you will get more results and you will get results higher in the rankings for your network of contacts not for random people. So, it’s for people who already know who you are. So this notion of people going around selling “hey, we’ll give you 7,000 +1’s” is not really useful at all. It isn’t going to artificially raise your ranking in the SERPS. What is important however is that you get a good profile and you look after it and you contribute and you do all those things like engaging because these things are eventually going to add to your ranking through, what we talked about 2 weeks ago, authorship code. For instance, if I +1 something in the Google SERPs it announces it to my friends and network of contacts. If people are +1ing things like they are down here, within the Google+ environment and over time if I get a lot of +1’s through my network within Google+, Google is going to think “well, lots of people like his stuff” not that this is my piece of information here. I’ve actually re-shared someone else’s piece of information and I’ve got a Google+ but what it means is that I have a reputable Google profile and that Google profile when it’s then connected back to pieces of content like we discussed in the Google authorship post, is going to influence your ranking. That’s what’s going to influence your ranking. Google authorship and how you maintain your Google profile and how other people engage with your Google profile, I believe is going to be the new page rank.
That is it for this week’s show. Hope to see you next week. Thanks very much. Bye.
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