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Google+ Content Likely to End Up on Search Results
Claire Cain Miller | January 11, 2012

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San Francisco. Google’s popularity was built on its ability to help people find just the right Web pages. Then came the social Web, led by Facebook, where people go to see vast amounts of material that has largely been off-limits to Google — conversations and photos posted by their friends.

On Tuesday, Google sparked controversy when it made some of the biggest changes ever to its search results, adding content from its fledgling Google+ social network. That includes posts, photos, profiles and conversations from Google+ that are public or were shared privately with the person searching.

With the new feature, which Google calls Search Plus Your World, it is once again reimagining what people want from its search engine, which for many is the front door to the Web. It is betting that they are looking for more personalized and timely updates than it has been offering, as it competes with Facebook and others for users’ time.

But many people turn to Google for links to expert information and might not want their search results to be cluttered with friends’ postings, or find it disconcerting to see personal information from friends in search results.

For some experts the new feature also raised antitrust concerns, because in many instances Google will show information from its social network before or instead of others.

Twitter said it was concerned that Google’s change would make timely information from Twitter more difficult to find on Google.

“We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users,” the company said in a statement.

Danny Sullivan, an expert on the search industry and editor of the blog Search Engine Land, said Google was right that people wanted to see social posts — but most of those posts are on other social networks.

“A lot of it is not on Google+,” he said. “Google’s job should be, what are the best social accounts I should be following, not the best Google+ accounts I should be following.”

But the changes show how important Google+ is to the company. By failing to get on board with social networking sooner, Google risked being left behind.

The New York Times