Yesterday Google unveiled a major update to their Social Search feature. MG Siegler over at TechCrunch did a nice job of breaking down the changes but I thought I would talk about the impact (if any) on your website getting found.

In Case You Missed It

The size of your social network is about to play an even bigger role in the search results you see. Google has now begun ranking search results in order of your social reach, to some degree. Links to pages that have been tweeted or re-tweeted by someone in your social circle will now be moved to the top of the search results page. Google has a deal with Twitter to allow the search giant access to the full stream of tweets.

Social Search Up Until Now

Until this latest improvement was announced, Social Search results (introduced in October of 2009) were results that appeared towards the bottom of the page. Links to blog posts or websites shared by your friends, or friends of friends would *only* appear at the bottom of the search results page. No impact on search rankings.

You might be asking the question: “2009, why haven’t I seen any social search results until now?”. Like many of the features released out of Google Labs, you must be signed into your Google account before performing a search. Think of it as an opt-in feature. Visitors to Google that never sign into their Google account will not see social search results.

Impact on Your Search Ranking

Google has upped the anti with this new incarnation. Links to blog posts or websites shared by your social circle may now appear above other websites in the search results page. This is huge! The role social networks like Twitter play in the findability of your website or blog is increasingly becoming more of a factor. The more your website or blog is shared online, the more likely your page is to appear in someone else’s search.

All that being said, this is still an opt-in type of feature. Unless you are signed into your Google account you will never have social results mixed in with regular results. You now have to go one step further; Google requires you to link your Google profile with your Twitter account, for example. You must add your social network account to your Google profile before this feature can be used. See screen shot below. Also, this only applies to visitors of Google.com. Those of us using Google.ca or other locale-specific search sites will not have access to this yet.

As MG Siegler points out, none of this applies to your Facebook network. Google hasn’t tapped into the effect of a Facebook “Like” on your website or post. Not yet anyway!

Why this is Important

As I mentioned earlier, the size of your social network as a business or blogger, is playing a bigger role in how your website or blog ranks among other search results. The larger your network, the greater your reach.

What’s your take on this? How many of you actually log into your Google account before running a search? That seems to be the one factor that prevents social search from completely obliterating a well optimized website. People just don’t go that extra step and log into their account before searching. If they are already logged into Google, how many of those users will go that extra step and link their Google profile with a social network like Twitter? I guess that remains to be seen.

Google has been working on several additions recently to its core search offering and there have been countless blog posts and reviews popping up all over the web. We will begin exploring some of the more newsworthy improvements in the days and weeks to come. More specifically, how they relate to SEO and your website’s findability online.

We’ve been asked recently by a few prospective clients about “Personalized Search” so we’re going to tackle that one first.

What is Personalized Search All About?

Google defines “Personalized Search” as the ability to use the search history you’ve been building to get better more relevant results (see Google’s original blog post here). Over time, Google will persist this information and use it to provide you with search results it thinks you want to see.

What kind of information? Things like search requests (topics and keywords) and click-thru results for a given website. For example, whether you clicked on any of its results and which ones in particular.

PS – Phase One

The first phase of the Personalized Search rollout worked well, however, there was a catch. The catch being that you must first have a Google account (Gmail). Second, you must be logged into that account for Google to begin persisting your search history. I don’t know about you, but I rarely if ever log into my Gmail account before googling something.

Your “personalized” search results may be ranked differently from someone else performing the same exact search based on your previous click-thru behavior. Phase One has been around for approximately four years now and hasn’t really changed the SEO landscape all that much.

PS – Phase Two

The second phase of the Personalized Search rollout is a bit more intrusive. Released earlier this month, this version does not require web searchers be logged into their Google account and is enabled for all users. Google takes advantage of a browser cookie to store relevant information related to your search habits. As with phase one, there is a catch. The catch in this case being that your search history only persists for 180 days. After that point your web history is cleared.

Again in this case, your “personalized” search results may be ranked differently from someone else performing the same exact search based on your previous click-thru behavior. As this second phase was only released very recently, the long-term effects are still unknown. That being said, I have noticed that Google just doesn’t do a great job unless I log into my Gmail account. I do a lot of searching and I just haven’t noticed very many “personalized” results where Google has actually customized something for me.

Has Personalized Search Killed Organic SEO?

There are a lot of discussions around the web that this second incarnation of Personalized Search is an SEO killer. I’m not alone when I say that is just not the case. Here’s why:

1. Google’s core search algorithm remains unchanged – the Personalized Search feature does not affect the results returned via Google’s search algorithm. Rather, it is a display functionality that adjusts the search results to add that personal touch
2. Content is still king – the combination of good content, a properly optimized website, and link juice are still critical. You have zero chance of showing up in someone’s personal search if your site doesn’t first achieve a good page rank. Search habits are learned through queries and click-thrus
3. A good brand goes a long way – the importance of building a brand has become even more important. A well known brand and/or website will always yield better results. Focus on making people love your website and building your image

It’s been referred to as Google’s “sandbox”, age deflation, and plain old website spam filtering.  Whatever you call it, the results are usually the same.  Oh and by the way, it’s not a good thing.

What Is It?

The article on Wikipedia refers to the sandbox effect as:

…a phenomenon that people have claimed to observe in the ranking of web pages that is performed by Google. It is the subject of much debate.

Even if I worked for Google and had first-hand experience with its search algorithm, I wouldn’t bore you with the technical details.  For the purposes of this blog post, the effects that the Google sandbox does or does not have can be summed up in a few short paragraphs.

Instead, I wanted to concentrate on what this means for small to medium-sized businesses and new websites in general.  Any good SEO firm out there should tell their clients that if you are a new website with a domain registered within the last one to three months (sometimes longer), you already have one strike against you.  New sites haven’t built up the kind of reputation and street cred that a site that has been in existence for 2-3+ years may have.  For that reason, even a superbly optimized site may not rank within the top 10 on Google.

In order to combat spam and force sites to slowly build up a reputation, some sources say that Google has implemented this sandbox or filter into their search algorithm.

Do I Really Need a Shovel?

I asked this question because there are other respected sources that discount the existence of such a sandbox.  They claim that sites which attribute their poor rankings to the “sandbox” are in fact poorly optimized for seo.  In any case, here are a few signs that your site may be stuck in the sand:

• The domain is relatively new – usually less than 1 year old
• Pages on the site don’t rank or rank poorly (page 5+) for even exact title matches
• Older sites outrank you for search queries containing optimized keywords/phrases
• Your site ranks well in other search engines
• Your site ranks well initially and then suddenly drops in rankings for no apparent reason

How Do I Grow Up and Step Out of the Sandbox?

Unfortunately, there is no single answer to that question other than “time”.  Unless there is a way for you to automagically add months/years to the age of your site, you just have to focus on what is in your control.  Here are a few things you can do:

• Register your domain immediately.  Even if you only have a few pages of content to post, you’ve started the age clock ticking
• Work with a good SEO firm to optimize your on-page content
• Research and target specific keywords and make sure your pages speak to those keywords
• Work on building strong links from reputable sites.  Weak links, or links from sites with a poor ranking of their own carry little to no weight.  Low quality links from other sites may actually increase your stay in the sandbox

Have you experienced the Google sandbox effect?  Do you think this is totally bogus?  Let us know your thoughts and share your experiences.