Yesterday I read a Mashable post introducing Google’s “Search Plus Your World” – to be honest I knew this was coming. When Google+ introduced brand pages a few months back, the first thing I thought about was the implication of these pages on search. Google will obviously rank a property of it’s own higher, right?
I have never been a fan of Google+, admittedly. It’s not an ideal experience for me as a social media user. It’s stuffy. It’s like a house party with no beer, filled with people standing around chatting awkwardly. I get that people like the long, threaded conversations and content sharing blah blah – but seriously, the 90′s called & they want their forums back. It’s not a new technology – and it thrives off of the features that made Facebook so popular (and that Facebook still does better); the newsfeed, the profile page, the act of validating content with your stamp of approval (Like vs. +1), commenting, photos, videos, tags, etc. The only thing I can think of when I think of maintaining this account is that this is a clusterfuck of social profiles and G+ is just another social identity to maintain.
…but this?!
I don’t know what the people over at Google are smoking, but they just made my search experience so so so much worse. I tried out “Search Plus Your World” today and its absolutely awful. Case & point:
Okay Google, you should be smart enough to know that I’ve read my feed. I’ve already seen this stuff – and when I search for social media, or anything (unless I Google myself) I don’t want to see my own posts. I have seen all this stuff before so you are in no way making my experience while searching for something better.
Obviously there are upsides to this… I mean I could just turn off the personalized search – there’s a toggle button that’s in plain sight. I mean I’m sure this product is useful for someone out there – but it kind of puts down the hammer on SEO, no? No longer will our search results be relevant to what we’re searching – they’ll be relative to what our friends have shared… even if it’s not really, I don’t know, RELEVANT?!
Please feel free to comment on this – Maybe there’s something I’m missing. Until then, EndRant.
-m.
