I was an early adopter of Google's social media platform, Google+. I did so for no other reason than it was part of Google. What are the chances, I asked myself, that Google is not at some point going to use this to somehow influence search results? They own search results! Or as +Guy Kawasaki says, "Google owns the river called search traffic".I continue to read negative comments about Google+. That it has failed. It's "a ghost town". It's kind of a joke among the several hundred people in my Google+ circles. "Nobody here but us ghosts". As recently as a month ago, I spied a Wall Street article about Google+ and how it is allegedly "forcing" people to use it. Commenters to the story showed a complete lack of understanding of Google+. I genuinely laughed out loud. Which is it? A ghost town or a town full of people who don't want to be there but were "forced into it" by Google?
So it's good to see Google CEO Eric Schmidt clarifying the strategic importance of Google+. This, according to Wall Street Journal, is an excerpt from Eric Schmidt's new book:
“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”Google+ is then, among other things, a way to verify the identity of authors, and the rankings will be tied to the author and not just the content.
Circle me at plus.jerrystevens.com
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