Ok – so Google has certainly done its fair share of helping the world of social media (or hindering it, according to your viewpoint). Taking tools such as You Tube, Blogger and Google Reader and making them accessible to millions has certainly been a major boost to each of these burgeoning areas. There have of course also been a few less than stellar steps including most recently Gooogle Buzz.

However, with its latest revision of its search engine homepage, I have to say that I feel it has given social media a real leg-up in the world of search and perhaps delivered a timely reminder that the worlds of social media and online search are complementary and indeed inextricably linked, no matter how different they seem at first glance.

What has changed?

Now far from me to complain about having to update yet another of my workshop presentations – after all, that’s why we’re here, to keep you up to date and ahead of the online marketing game – but this really is another key step change.

So what is it that’s changed?

Well, after all that build up, it may seem a bit of a let down that they are not really offering anything revolutionary – in fact, most of this has been around for a while. We have long been able to search subsections of the main Google index, the difference is that these results have now been made much more visible and have been slightly reorganised as well. This makes them much more likely to be used and that in turn will help to promote the types of content they contain much more prominently.

And there’s the rub – although the main index will not be affected, the other essential subdivisions which exist are now going to be more more easy to access. This gives an additional set of reasons – search based ones rather than social media ones I grant you – why we need to ensure that we are participating in the places that will deliver additional visibility.

Where will we see the changes

On Google’s Search Results pages, you’ll now see that there is a left hand column visible which contains details of the different subsections of information which are now available.

For me, there are three which are of particular interest and have a particular resonance as we look at social media and its extending influence.

a) Blogs

Google Blog Search has been around for quite some time – indeed, together with Technorati, it has been a mainstay of searching blogs since I started working with them and that’s been a few years now. However, searchers will now be much more aware of it and instead of having to go in search of the Google Blog Search engine, Blogs will now be a visible option for any given query. People will tend to gravitate to this set of results if they are looking for more recent commentary on their chosen subject. More power to your blogging efforts!

b) Updates

Google has tried a number of different ways to integrate its real-time search sources and this is the role that the “Updates” section is now designed to fulfil. The results is a mix of information coming primarily from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Buzz, etc. and will give you a good start point to try to track down ongoing conversations on topics of interest, including of course you and/or your company. Good to have all this accessible and in one place, I believe, without impacting on the more in depth content from elsewhere.

c) Discussions

The Discussions area that tackles the area in between blogs and updates by looking at content from forums as well as Q&A sites – I’m guessing that this will be constantly extended. This is obviously interesting both as a listening post but also as another way to get your name and expertise as visible as possible – answering questions on specialist sites will tend to lead into interaction with people interested in the same topics and, at the same time, displays your own expertise in the area and the resultant boost to your profile.

In many cases, the information they deliver will still be available via the main search results, however, we will be able to filter out the rest if we want and this will be of value to those managing to appear prominently in each section.

Oh, and as a last point, if you were wondering where the “only pages from UK” (or your own country search) had gone for your local search option, that’s over in the sidebar now as well.

See what works for you

This isn’t particularly going to change companies and individuals from non users to avid evangelists all on its own, after all, there are so many great reasons to engage in the social world without extra visibility on Google necessarily swaying it.

However, it is an excellent step forward in highlighting the different types of information that are available on the web and it will make the whole area more visible to the 70+% of online searchers who use Google on a regular basis.

So check out these new offerings from Google and focus in on those that you would want your business to be found for – hopefully you’re already doing so but this will make the job of tracking your success even easier. While, as I stated at the start, this is hardly a new strategy, it is nevertheless more important for visibility than ever before.

Related posts:

1. Facebook and Google: social media versus search?
2. Your Social Media home online
3. Being found via Social Media and Business Blogs