Search Plus Your World – a Curse or a Blessing?

When Search plus Your World got rolled out, it looked pretty bizarre to me. My first question was, 'What the heck is this?' But, well, that could be just me.

Anyhow, SPYW is here. And, moving beyond the initial reaction like 'Gosh, I hate it' or 'Wow, I love it', I would like to try and analyze what this new feature holds for different parties in the game.

Google

The blessing

There are over 2 billion people using the Internet on the globe. Out of these 2 billion, 90 million users have G+ accounts as of January 2012. This means that about every 20th Internet user will be exposed to the new feature IN FULL. Besides, signed-out users will be exposed to it to some extent, too (think of People and Pages).

What does this mean for Google? Well, exposure! The more often people see this G+ stuff, the more actively they will want to use the network. The more often they use the network, the more new people will get attracted to it. Not to mention that businesses will simply NOT be able to ignore G+ any longer.

The curse

At the same time, Google now has to deal with accusations regarding using its status as the market leader to push the fledgling network. This could or could not be the biggest problem with SPYW for Google, depending on how it turns out. Just like Microsoft's historic adding of Internet Explorer to Windows that resulted in 'the United States vs Microsoft' case, Google's move may lead to a serious FTC issue. So far, FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has simply added SPYW to the big pile of other antitrust complains they have on Google.

Bing

The blessing

Ever since Search plus Your World appeared, quite a lot of people on the Web have been talking about switching to Bing, cause, they believe, Google has been getting crappier and greedier over the past couple of years. However, most of those people are actually SEO's and Web marketers, and they are complaining because now they have extra headache to deal with (IMHO).

The curse

SPYW is something totally unique, and it may be that, in the future, quite a big portion of people will warm up to it. It's only a possibility, but, who knows? If this happens, Bing will be forced to add a similar or a better functionality, too.

Twitter

The blessing

It's hard to imagine how Twitter can possibly benefit from the update besides making several pieces of scandalous news. Also, there are rumors that Google may simply buy Twitter in the near future. But, whether that'd be a blessing for Twitter, I'm not that positive.

The curse

With more and more G+ pages appearing on Search plus Your World now, the number of Tweets appearing for the same search terms will most likely be reduced. This is because Google said they do not have the permission to crawl Twitter as deeply as they can crawl their own social media property, hence, there is nothing left for Google to do other than display G+ pages in the SERPs. Yeah, right...

Facebook

The blessing

G+ may actually help Facebook get Twitter out of the picture. However, if Google partners with Twitter (which is not likely to happen, I think), Facebook will have to work much harder to sustain its position of the leader.

The curse

If Google's SPYW trick actually works and things turn out well for G+, this will mark a dark day for Facebook. It will have to work really hard and come up with something new to remain the world's most used social network.

Social media specialists

The blessing

I think it's heyday for social media folks now. They have yet another fruitful niche to tap into - the new, powerful-as-ever G+. Also, suddenly, everybody needs social media - website owners, SEO's, webmasters. So, it's time for social media managers to educate and procreate!

The curse

Yeah, yeah, yeah, social media folks now have to deal with G+ whether they want it or not. So, learning something new is inevitable (for those who haven't mastered it yet).

SEO's

The blessing

Oh, what about us, SEO's? Now, we have a real reason to be cursing Google and sending Matt Cutts angry messages, threatening to dump Google and switch to Bing… Well, besides that, we now have THE BUTTON, mind you. So, there is something good in it for SEO's as well. You can now switch Web history off in a hit, and that's already something! Perhaps Google will introduce an 'override geolocation' (SEO software) lever next? Would be nice!

The curse

It has become harder to rank websites near Google's top with all those G+ listings taking up quite a lot of space. Besides, the personalization plague appears even scarier now, especially when it comes to explaining to clients why they see different results.

Users

The blessing

Good old user! Users probably do not even suspect what battle is taking place right behind their backs. Or do they? Anyhow, besides the initial surprise, I don't think the feature will make that much of a difference to the end user.

Well, it will definitely be easier to find different stuff related to one's self on the Web, for those who need it. However, I don't think users would like their search results to be largely replaced by all-personal results, the way it happens in Google's promo video:

The curse

The new feature may cause trouble to some users, I think. Say, you forget to log out, someone uses your machine, performs a search and sees your private stuff. Not good.

How is it different from forgetting to log out of, say, your Facebook account? See, there is a big difference between intentionally sneaking a peek into somebody's Facebook profile and performing a search and - oops - seeing someone's G+ pages in the search results. The latter does not presuppose deliberate intent and is much more likely to happen.

Conclusion

As you see, there is both good and bad in the Search plus Your World feature introduced by Google. For some parties it's more beneficial than not, for others – vice versa. As for us, SEO's, we now have some work to do.