“Don’t Be Evil” Tool — Backed By Facebook & Twitter — Shows Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Can Go Beyond Google+

I’ve written that Google has plenty of public data to allow parts its newSearch Plus Your World feature to be inclusive of rival social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now, those networks are proving that true, through a new “Don’t Be Evil” tool that lets anyone leverage Google’s own results to see this.

The tool — a bookmarklet that works in your browser — changes three parts of Search Plus Your World that currently shows information only from Google Plus. These are:

• People & Pages results
• Google+ Sitelinks
• Google+ Suggestions In Autocomplete

The tool can be found on the Focus On The User web site. It was created, as the site says, by engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, who in turn consulted with other unnamed social networking companies. The “Don’t Be Evil” name of the tool comes from Google’s philosophy of wanting to focus on what’s best for users, rather than what’s best for Google.

The companies behind the tool feel Google’s hasn’t focused on what’s best for its users with Search Plus Your World. They have a good point. But the tool makes this point better than all the debates that have happened so far around Search Plus Your Word, because it shows what Google could have done to better serve searchers, if it had wanted to.

Below, how to install the tool and how it works, once you’ve done so, along with a revisiting of some of the issues it highlights.

Installing The Don’t Be Evil Bookmarklet

To get the tool, head to the site and look for the “Try a more relevant Google” button:

Clicking the button will make a new window appear, with a “don’t be evil” button that’s visible:

You click and hold on that button, then drag it to the bookmarks bar in your browser (if you don’t see your bookmarks bar, look in your browser’s options to make this visible):

Once it’s installed, you’ll see it on your on your bookmarks bar:

When you search on Google, you push that button to transform your results, as I’ll cover next. By the way, I’ve tested this with both Google Chrome and Firefox. It should also work with Safari. It doesn’t work with Internet Explorer.

Problem: “People & Pages” Powered By Google+

One of the biggest issues I’ve had with Search Plus (my shorthand name for Search Plus Your World) was the new “People and Pages on Google+” results that appear for some searches. These can show up even if you don’t have a Google+ account or are logged out of Google entirely.

These are the first search results that I’ve ever seen on Google that haven’t been inclusive of sources beyond Google, when those sources are available. To understand more about this, and how it’s such a major departure for Google, see my previous post, To Understand Google Favoritism, Think If Google+ Were YouTube.

Aside from favoring Google in a way that I’ve never seen before, I’ve felt that the results simply weren’t providing the best information to searchers at Google, especially given the prime real estate being given to them. My previous story, Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy, explains more about that.

The reason for the relevancy gap was simple. Google+ still lacks many important or notable people that might be on the other social networks. Indeed, until last week, Lady Gaga wasn’t on Google+ despite being one of the most followed people on Twitter and Facebook. Her absence meant she’d never have a chance at being one of the music recommendations for the People & Places results that Google was showing.

Including other social accounts in People & Pages results would, as I’ve written repeatedly, done what I expect of Google as a search engine, delivered a great search experience. From one of my past posts:

I’d love to see is Google retool the social suggestions that come up, so they aren’t simply Google+ “People & Pages” results injected into Google but more inclusive of other social sites, as well. Because that type of inclusive search product is what Google does well, and what we expect for the company to provide.

Now the engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have done what I expected Google to do, create a social suggestions search engine. Let’s see some examples.

Solution: “People & Pages” Powered By Google Search

Let’s start with a search for music. On the left, what you see from Google’s Search Plus. On the right, how things change after you click the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet:

The first set of arrows at the top show how “People and Pages on Google+” is changed instead to “People and Pages from the Social Web.”

The second set of arrows shows how for Britney Spears, rather than her Google+ profile being shown (where she has 1.6 million followers), her Twitter account is displayed (where she has 12.6 million followers). Underneath her Twitter account, links to her MySpace, Facebook and Tumblr accounts are also shown.

The third set of arrows shows how for Snoop Dogg, rather than his Google+ profile being shown (with 1.4 million followers), his Twitter account (with 6.2 million followers) is shown. Underneath that, links to his MySpace, Facebook and Google+ accounts are displayed.

I’ll explain more about how each profile gets selected, but first, let’s do some more examples. Here’s a search for cars:

For this search, the Google+ page for Ferrari (6,500 followers) is changed to Ferrari’s Facebook page (5.6 million followers), with its YouTube page as an alternative link. Toyota’s Google+ page (180,000 followers) is also changed to the Toyota Facebook page (700,000 followers).

One of my favorite examples to show the failing of Google’s current system is a search for Facebook:

On the left, Google’s regular listings suggest Mark Zuckerberg’s Google+ profile as something people should follow. It really is Zuckerberg’s official page, with over 600,000 followers. However, Zuckerberg has never posted to it since creating that profile shortly after Google+ launched.

On the right, the Don’t Be Evil button transforms that listing into something useful, a pointer toZuckerberg’s Facebook page (his Google+, Twitter and Quora pages are listed as alternatives.

Also notice the arrows. In this case, I was signed-in to Google+, which is why an “Add to circles” button appear next to the Google+ result. However, when the result was transformed to show a Facebook listing, I got an indication showing that I was already following Zuckerberg on Facebook (if I wasn’t, a Like button allowing me to follow him would have appeared).

One more example, this time to show that there’s more intelligence going on that just stripping out Google+ links and swapping them for any other network. Here’s a search for Google:

The first suggestion is for Google’s own page on Google+, which is changed to Google’s page on Twitter. Notice how there’s a “Follow” button next to the Twitter link, as well.

Under that is Larry Page. His listing isn’t changed. It remains pointing to his Google+ page, which makes sense. To the best of my knowledge, that’s the only place he’s active socially. While LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts are also shown for him, none of those seem to be real accounts for him.

What’s The Most Relevant Social Account To Show? Ask Google!

We could debate which is the most best social account to show for each of the examples above in various ways, such as:

• Should it be based on followers? If so, in many cases, accounts on the established social networks of Twitter and Facebook would easily trump Google+ accounts, though not always.
• Should it be based on activity? Britney hasn’t posted to Google+ since January 18. Her last tweets are more recent, as of January 21. Does that count for more?
• Should it be based on engagement? Even if Britney hasn’t been on Google+ recently, perhaps her engagement with fans is better there?

Rather than try to figure all this out — and potentially come under accusations they were selecting metrics to favor their own social networks — the developers of the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet decided to let Google itself figure out which social account was most relevant.

For example, let’s go back to how the listing for Snoop Dogg was changed:

What happens is that the bookmarklet looks at which accounts are listed initially by Google in the People & Pages section. It then does a search for the people or companies listed to find which social profiles Google itself believes are most relevant, in the first 100 results.

In the case of Snoop Dogg, the bookmarklet sees that he’s listed as a People & Pages suggestion for a search on “music.” It then conducts a search for “snoop dogg” on Google, to see which social account Google lists first for him.

As you can see above, Twitter is the first social account shown, so the bookmarklet rewrites Snoop Dogg’s suggestion to link to his Twitter account. His MySpace account is found next, so it’s listed as the first alternative. Facebook is found after that, so it’s the second alternative. Google+ is found after that, so it becomes the third alternative.

According to the tool’s FAQ page, it checks for links from any of these social networks:

• CrunchBase (weird, I wouldn’t consider this a social network)
• Github
• Google+
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• FriendFeed
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Quora
• Stack Overflow
• Tumblr
• Twitter

All the information the tool finds comes solely from Google itself, even the profile pictures, which are generated using Google’s own rich snippets testing tool, as the FAQ page explains.

Because only Google’s own information is being used, the tool can’t patch up a key weakness, which is that all the suggestions are initially based on people who are in Google Plus.

For example, you will never get Katy Perry as a music suggestion, despite her being one of the most followed musicians on Facebook or Twitter. That’s because she’s not on Google+, so she has no chance of appearing as a suggestion to music-related queries. If she doesn’t get suggested, then the tool can’t add her.

Problem: Autocomplete Profiles Only For Google+

Another feature of Search Plus that favors Google+ is within Google’s search box. As you type, the autocomplete feature of Google Instant will suggest things you should search for. For notable or prominent people, these suggestions may also include a link to their Google+ profile. For example, consider this search for Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg:

Just typing in the word “sheryl”  – when I was completely logged out of Google — was enough for it to suggest that I select her Google+ page, where Sandberg last posted in September. That’s pretty preferential treatment. Why should that be suggested over Sandberg’s personal web site or another social profile?

Solution: Expand The Choices

The Don’t Be Evil button developers call the autocomplete suggestions “typeahead” results. When you use their button, the typeahead suggestion is changed. For Sandberg, her Facebook profile is shown:

The same logic I explained above is used to do this. Whatever Google lists as the first social network for a search on Sandberg’s name, that profile is used to go into the autocomplete box (though for me, it should be her CrunchBase profile there, not her Facebook profile).

I’ve covered this in my earlier articles, but I’ll stress it again. Pointing to Google+ profiles — and no other profiles — was a significant change to favor Google+ than how Google operated in the past. Consider this:

That’s where I’m starting a search for “facebook.” I’ve only entered the “face” part and, already, Google suggests that I go directly to the Facebook home page from within the search box itself.

Google started offering these types of suggestions back in 2008 and 2009. You can still see it working today, if you disable Google Instant predictions within your search settings. Typing in Amazon, or Best Buy or New York Times brings up other examples of this.

Most people have Google Instant on, since it’s the default, so they never see these type of “old” web link suggestions. Instead, they get the new Google+ profile ones. Google didn’t have to only push these, but it chose to.

Problem: Sitelinks Only For Google+

Ever done a search and noticed a bunch of listings “indented” under the main listing? Those are called sitelinks. For listings associated with Google+ accounts, they pick up special sitelinks, their last two posts on Google Plus. Here an example for TV Guide, what someone who is logged out of Google would see:

The two arrows point to the special Google+ sitelinks that are appearing. This type of thing existed before Search Plus Your World rolled out, though I can’t recall any formal announcement of it. Certainly when Direct Connect for Google+ came out, there was nothing that highlighted these sitelinks as part of that.

In fact, the addition of them feels very odd, given how just over a year ago, Google was showing sitelinks of a different sort for other social networks. For example, here’s how a search for Twitter was suggesting people our news editor Barry Schwartz should follow:

Solution: New Social Sitelinks

The Don’t Be Evil button replaces the Google+ sitelinks similarly to how other changes are done. Here’s TV Guide again:

Rather than two Google+ sitelinks being shown, only a single one appears. In this case, it’s a link to TV Guide’s Twitter profile, since that’s the first profile that the tool finds when doing a Google search for “tv guide.” A link to TV Guide’s Facebook profile follows as an alternative.

Which Way Forward?

As I’ve explained in many articles over the past two weeks, I’ve been pretty disturbed by Google’s promotion of Google+ within its search pages.

The “People & Pages” results, if they’re intended as a promotion for Google+, still come across as if they are regular search results — results that I think Google users assume come from across the web. They do not. The come only from Google+ itself.

You could argue with better labeling, that type of promotion might work better. But that still leaves questions about why Google+ profiles are being pushed within Google’s search suggestions, rather than links to other pages from across the web. The links shown there aren’t necessarily the most relevant suggestions to be shown.

Google, in particular its executive chairman Eric Schmidt, has argued that it doesn’t have all the data it needs to include other social services in the way it does for Google Plus. The failure to reach a deal with Facebook; the failure to renew a deal with Twitter, these have prevented the social signals it needs from being used, Google has said.

The Don’t Be Evil tool demonstrates this isn’t the case, that there are social signals that Google already can find which could be used, if it wants.

Of course, if Google had done so what the Don’t Be Evil tool is doing now — incorporated links to Facebook and Twitter after they’ve rejected deals — potentially Google could have been accused of scraping content from them without permission. Indeed, that was one of the thingsFacebook suggested last year in what was widely seen as a smear campaign.

I put that to Facebook when I talked with the company last week about the tool. I was told Facebook saw a difference between taking public signals to build a competing social service — as it felt Google was doing — and using those signals as part of a search service that points outward.

I was also assured that if Google wanted to do the types of things that the Don’t Be Evil tool is now doing, Facebook wouldn’t complain.

We’ll see. I’ll be following up with Google. In the meantime, you can read more at the Focus On The User web site, and there’s also an overview video available:

John Battelle also has a nice write-up with his perspective here, and Techmeme has a round-up of coverage from others.

Google’s Unusual Balancing Act

It can seem confusing — even hypocritical — for services like Facebook and Twitter to not release their public data more fully to anyone (including Google) without demanding deals, then complain they don’t feel represented enough in search results.

It can also seem odd that both of those companies might favor themselves in their own social networks, not include Google+, yet demand that Google somehow be “fair” to them.

The challenge Google faces, however, is that it operates both a social network and a search engine. The Google+ social network does compete with Facebook and Twitter, and anyone would expect that it should favor itself.

The Google search engine, however, was founded on the idea that it should be fair to all. That is, after all, what a good search engine should do — provide the best results, not the results best for its parent company. The continued Google+ification of Google’s search results is bringing that fairness into question.

Potentially, that’s an anti-trust issue (and Facebook, as the dominant social service, might find itself similarly under pressure to open up to competitors). But anti-trust issues aside, it’s simply a trust issue. Will users trust that Google’s results are doing the right thing by them?

I strongly encourage anyone feeling lost in all this debate and some of the tricky issues it presents to see my post from last week, FAQ: What’s The Debate About Google’s Search Plus Your World?

Finally, you can expect we’ll be taking a close look at the huge changes that Google+ is unleashing in the search marketing space at our upcoming SMX West conference in San Jose Feb. 28-March 1, in particular during these sessions:

• Getting Personal, Part 1: How Google & Bing Personalize With Social Connections
• Getting Personal, Part 2: How Google & Bing Personalize With Search History & Geography
• SEO For Google+ & Google Search
• Ask The Search Engines – Open Q&A Forum

Be sure to see the full agenda and register soon to save the most on a ticket

Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World

Google’s search results are undergoing their most radical transformation ever, as a new “Search Plus Your World” format begins rolling out today. It finds both content that’s been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings.

The change is live now, though not everyone will see it until it fully launches over the next few days. It’s only for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English. You’ll know when it happens, because Google will alert you with a message like this above your search results:

The new system will perhaps make life much easier for some people, allowing them to find both privately shared content from friends and family plus material from across the web through a single search, rather than having to search twice using two different systems.

However, Search Plus Your World may cause some privacy worries, as private content may appear as if it is exposed publicly (it is not). It might also cause concern by making private content more visible to friends and family than those sharing may have initially intended.

The new format and features will also likely cause Google to come under renewed fire that it is leveraging its search engine to favor its own content and crowd out competitors.

Below, a detailed look at what’s involved with Search Plus Your World, from how it works to some of the issues it raises.

Before: Personalized & Social Search Results Separate

Google has had personalized results since June 2005, results from across the web that are given a ranking boost because they are deemed especially of interest to someone, based on their personal behavior and interests. Without the boost, these results might not have made it into the top listings for a particular search.

Personalized results were expanded and presented in a new way in February 2007. Then, in December 2009, you no longer had to opt-in to receive personalized results. They were enabled by default for everyone, to some degree, even if you weren’t signed-in to Google.

Separately, Google has had social search results since October 2009. These are also personalized listings but ones based on the people you know, rather than your personal behavior. They’ve also been given a ranking boost.

Initially segregated from “regular” listings, Google’s social search results were blended into regular results in Feburary 2011 and expanded to include not just content created by those you know but also content shared by them through a variety of social networks.

Now: Personal, Private, Public & Social United

With Search Plus Your World, by default, there’s a new “Personal Results” view that appears. The view personalizes the listings you get based on both your own behavior and social connections, similar to what previously happened. In addition, content that’s been shared with you through the Google+ social network now also appears.

“The social search algorithm, and the personal search algorithm, and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful,” said Amit Singhal, who oversees Google’s ranking algorithms, when I talked with him about the new features.

You’ll know that personalized results are appearing when you see one or both of the indicators below:

The arrow on the left points to a message that, in this example, says that there are “50 personal results and 419,000 other results” that have been found. Some of those 50 results will be blended into the first page of results being shown.

The second arrow highlights a new toggle that Google has introduced, something that many of those who do search engine optimization have wanted for ages. It allows you to switch between personalized and unpersonalized results.

I’ll cover more about the toggle in a bit. When the button with a person icon is shown dark, that means results are being personalized.

Private Content In Your Web Results

To summarize, personalized results include:

• Listings from the web
• Listings from the web, boosted because of your personal behavior
• Listings from the web, boosted because of your social connections
• Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos (all of which are also listings from the web)
• Private or “Limited” Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you

The last line is the most radical change, that private content will now be visible in what seems to be a search across the entire web. Here’s an example:

In this example provided by Google (complete with its arrow), you can see how one of the photos is showing up with the note: “You shared this – Limited.”

This is a real life example of how personalized search is working for Singhal. He shared this photo of his dog, Chikoo, on Google+ in a limited manner, rather than with the entire world. The other photos of the dog that you can see, including one from his wife, Shilpa, were also privately shared.

Before today’s change, a Google search wouldn’t have found any of these photos when Singhal, his wife or anyone he’s shared them with searched for “chikoo,” which is a fruit. That’s because since the photos were private, Google couldn’t see them.

Instead, if Singhal or others with access to these photos wanted to find them, they would have had to use the completely separate Google+ Search.

The new feature will also work to find Google+ posts that have been shared in a limited manner, or for Google Picasa photos shared privately.

Slightly confusing, you can drill-down into the results to get what Google also calls “Personal Results,” which is a way to get just content from Google+ or Picasa. Remember this from above?

Clicking on the “personal results” link (or “Personal” in the options under “More Search Tools” in the left-column) brings back pure personal results.

No Content From Facebook Or Others, But Google Open To This

I’ve no doubt many people will find it useful to do one search to locate both private and public information at once. However, one of the biggest depositories of private information these days — if not the biggest — is Facebook.

Search Plus Your World doesn’t cover content on Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Flickr. Or any social network or place where content might be shared to a more limited audience. Currently, “Search Plus Your World” would be better described as “Search Plus Google+”

Why are these others missing?

“Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service,” Singhal told me. “Of course, going forward, if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”

Perhaps Search Plus Your World will prove the carrot or stick that Google’s been after for yearsto get Facebook to share its data with Google. If the new feature takes off, searchers may wonder why they can’t find privately shared information from their Facebook friends easily on Google.

Then again, Facebook could decide to push back by beefing up its own search features. Currently, Facebook partners with Bing, allowing Bing to personalize its search results for searchers based on what their Facebook friends like.

However, only publicly shared content gets personalized like this. Potentially, Facebook and Bing could work more closely to come up with their own version of Search Plus Your World. That could happen on Bing, or it could happen within Facebook itself.

To date, Facebook’s not spent much time trying to refine its own search results. The primary reason seems to be that the company has repeatedly said that most of the Facebook-based searches it sees are to find people, not to find information about broad topics as happens at Google.

Only You & Those You Share With See Private Content

When Google first showed me Search Plus Your World, a part of me felt unsettled and uncomfortable. As I’ve thought about it more, I think it’s because it feels weird to see “private” content appearing in seems like Google’s “public” search results.

Of course, personalized results aren’t Google’s public results. They are results personalized just for the person viewing them. If private content has been shared with those people, that’s visible. If it hasn’t been, then it’s not.

Google’s also not making it possible to search for anything that you couldn’t already search for before. As I explained, private content shared on Google+ could be found with a Google+ search. Google’s really just making Google+ Search one of its Universal Search sources, in some ways.

In other words, you can search on Google and find matches from Google News, Google Images, Google Video and other Google search services without having to go to them individually. Google+ Search is now another one of those integrated services.

Will It Lead To Concerns?

As said, the ability to search for private content on Google+ isn’t new. However, I wonder if having it integrated into Google’s search results itself might cause some surprises and issues for both Google and its users.

Consider sites selling counterfeit goods. When Google links to these, it gets blamed for promoting counterfeiting, almost as if it created the sites. What’s really happening is that Google comes under fire for giving sites visibility.

Now Google’s going to give greater visibility to private information. Things that people may have forgotten sharing with others will begin to show up serendipitously through ordinary Google searches. Some might not like this, if material they’ve happily forgotten suddenly seems to reappear. Google might take the blame, even though the sharing was done by others.

It might be similar to some of the concerns that came up recently with Facebook Timeline. It’s not that the material Timeline lists wasn’t out there before. But by organizing it, forgotten things are brought back up, as this New York Times article explained well.

Another issue is that it’s very easy with Google+ (as it is with Facebook and Twitter) for someone with access to private content to reshare it publicly. Someone searching on Google, then coming across an unexpected photo or post from a friend, might reshare it to the world.

All this could happen without the search integration. Maybe none of it will be much of an issue at all. But these are concerns that come to mind.

One solution might be an option to exclude your shared content from being searchable. This is something that can be done with public content on the web. You can tell Google or other search engines not to include published material in their search listings. Perhaps Google needs to offer the same for private content, as well (it doesn’t currently).

Secure Search Protects Privacy; Referrers For Advertisers Does Not

Google’s been focused on a bigger concern. Mixing private content in with its search results means that anyone searching without a secure connection potentially exposes that private content to eavesdropping.

And now the full story about why Google rolled out secure search for signed-in users back in October can finally be told. It was necessary preparation to allow for Search Plus Your World to happen today.

“We’ve been working on it for a year, very hard to get it right,” Singhal said, of dealing with the security issues. “It’s just a hard technical problem that we bit off, and it was something that we could not launch until we had it right.”

The encryption that secure search provides means that any private material mixed in with your regular results is protected, seen only by your browser and Google, not by anyone somehow monitoring an internet connection you’re using.

Many publishers were upset about the encryption move last year because, as part of that, Google also stopped providing referrer data, information that shows what searches someone did on Google before visiting a web site.

Expect Google to point to today’s move as a further reason to justify the dropping of referrers. It’s a false justification. Indeed, the move might make things even worse, in terms of privacy, since referrer data is still being passed to advertisers.

Potentially, people are going to search for even more private things than they ever did before. Potentially, they’re going to click on ad links and pass these private search terms to advertisers.

Today’s change does nothing to change my view that Google needs to revisit the referrer blocking and either make it a block for everyone, including advertisers, or find a better way to filter search terms that get made visibile in various ways.

My post from Sunday explains this in more depth: 2011: The Year Google & Bing Took Away From SEOs & Publishers.

Opt-Out, Not Opt-In

Don’t like the idea of personalized search? Disappointingly, Google didn’t go the opt-in route. Instead, you have to deliberately opt-out.

“I think this is a much better experience, at the end of the day,” Singhal said, explaining why the default change was made.

You can opt-out permanently through the Search Settings area on Google. You can also opt-out on a per-search basis using the aforementioned toggle. Click on the globe symbol, and you’ll see unpersonalized results.

This is nice. It’s the first time since December 2009 that people have been able to easily see “normal” results, if they want them.

Personalized Is The New “Normal”

Of course, it’s a mistake to assume that doing this really shows normal results. It will eliminate personalization factors such as your web browsing history (if you provide that to Google through its toolbar in Internet Explorer), your searching history or your social connections.

But geographic targeting — which can be really significant – will still happen. So will targeting by language. Google has begun calling these contextual signals rather than personal ones. Both can be overridden, for those who want. But doing so will still produce results that are still tailored, just to a different geographical location or language.

More important, with Google heading toward 100 million users on Google+, if a good number of those are active users, then they’re logged in to Google. That means the “normal” results they see are personalized. Personalized results are normal; non-personalized are not.

Google Profiles Get Big Push

Another big change as part of today’s release is how people with Google+ accounts are going to be much more heavily highlighted in Google search.

For those logged in, they’ll begin seeing their friends appear right within the search box, like this:

You can see how for Ben Smith, a little picture of him appears next to the search suggestion for his name, which in turn is a link to his Google+ profile, if it were selected.

This is very similar to how Google Direct Connect works for Google+ Business Pages. The results individuals see are biased toward people in their own social networks, similar to how Facebook works when you search for people there.

In other words, if you searched for a friend who had a common name, you should be shown your actual friend’s Google+ profile, rather than someone you don’t know.

In addition, the search results themselves will devote much more room to displaying material from a Google+ person (and actually have been doing so since November):

In the example above, you can see how Ben Smith’s Google+ profile is listed right within the results, with some of his recent posts shown. He’s a friend of Singhal’s, which is why posts with “Limited” sharing appear. The “Friends” circle on Google+ that Singhal has put him in is also shown.

“For me, it’s going to change my relationship on how I look at Google search,” Singhal told me. “It makes it much easier for me to get to what they [someone he knows or is interested in] were saying or if there are web results I should care about.”

What About Promoting Facebook Profiles Or Even Web Sites?

Still, it’s a lot of room devoted to Google+ profiles. While Facebook’s terms have prevented Google from getting some data, I can’t see any particular reason why the type of direct connect suggestion being shown above — as well as the deep display of content from a Facebook profile page — couldn’t also be done for Facebook, not to mention Twitter.

After all, if Google can do expanded sitelinks for social media profiles like at Quora or Twitter, then expanded profile listings showing some relevant posts from those profiles doesn’t seem that difficult.

Of course, it’s harder to do in the case above since the suggestion is made because Smith is known to be one of Singhal’s friends. But Google will be suggesting some celebrities and famous people even if the searcher hasn’t connected to them yet:

The example above shows how photographer Trey Ratcliff is being suggested, with a link to his Google+ profile, even though Singhal isn’t already connected to him.

That helps Ratcliff build his Google+ following. But what if he preferred that his Facebook profile be given a link? Or a link to his own web site? Google used to do this type of thing back in 2008and 2009:

See how a search for New York Times used to bring up a link directly to the New York Times within the search box? That seems to have quietly disappeared.

Now something similar is turning up, something so tied to only Google+ that you can bet some of Google’s anti-trust critics are going to have a field day saying the company is pushing itself unfairly. And that’s a valid criticism.

People & Pages Suggestions

In fact, if the anti-trust critics need more ammunition, there’s the last component of what’s being rolled out today, suggestions for people and pages on Google+ to follow.

These will appear on the right-hand side of search results, when Google decides they are relevant. Below, what a search for “music” might show:

That’s nice promotion for Google+ (and it also underscores yet again why search marketers simply cannot ignore Google+). But there are still many more people on Twitter and Facebook versus Google Plus.

Google should be able to easily figure out what profiles on other social networks might be relevant to searches. That’s Google’s job as a search engine, if it’s going to make these type of recommendations. But only Google+ gets this type of treatment, and it doesn’t feel right.

Wrapping Up

Overall, I like the integration that allows for searching through private and public material. As I’ve said, I think many people will find it useful.

I do think there are some additional privacy controls that could be added, in particular, the ability for people to opt their content out of being found through search, if they want.

But really, more than anything, I’d like to see Google diligently work in the coming weeks to see how it can level the playing field for the other social networks.

Yes, there are things that Facebook or Twitter might not allow, not without Google cutting deals or agreeing to terms it may not want to. But there are also above-and-beyond things that I think Google probably could do to promote these other services in the way it’s doing for Google Plus. I’d like to see that happen.

More Information

Below, a video from Google about the new features:

Google also has a blog post up with details here. Coverage from other news sources can be found here on Techmeme. Below, about a billion background stories from us that give more context about today’s change.

Postscript: Since the launch, there’s been quite a debate over whether Google is favoring itself in various ways.

5 Things Google Plus Can Do to Outbox Facebook

 

It’s been a fascinating year in the social networking space, as heavyweight champion Facebook fends off some solid blows from muscley contender Google Plus. However over the past week, it’s been nearly all Facebook – with the release of the Subscriber button and vastly improved lists (akin to Google Plus “circles”). This week, or perhaps I should say round, is also shaping up to be a big one for Facebook. Its annual developer conference F8 is on this Thursday in San Francisco. According to uber-blogger Robert Scoble, “Facebook has one of its biggest releases ever coming this week.” ReadWriteWeb will be at F8 to cover whatever big punches Facebook delivers.

Meanwhile the Google Plus team has been fairly quiet lately, other than the announcement of a (limited) API last week. Here are five things we wish Google Plus would do, both to improve its still nascent product and to make Facebook stagger a little against the ropes!

1. Automate creation and maintenance of Circles.

This has been my number one problem with Google Plus so far: the large amount of effort it takes up front to create circles of people (a.k.a. friends lists) and then the ongoing hassle of maintaining them.

Facebook showed the way forward for Google Plus, by launching improved – and semi-automated – friends lists last week. Facebook now automatically creates lists based on your location, workplace and a couple more bits of information from your profile. It’s still relatively simple and not perfectly implemented. But it’s a damn sight better than starting from scratch, which Google Plus makes you do.

2. Add a special search box for Google Plus.

While any public content on Google Plus can be searched using ordinary Google search, any private post or data about Circles is hidden from Google.com. The Google Plus team knows this is something their users want, so it’s likely they’re working on an internal Google Plus search as we speak. It will be a great addition when it finally happens, because neither Facebook or Twitter does a good job archiving and surfacing old posts.

Twitter has a notoriously short memory, while Facebook has (up till now) been happy to make its users ‘live in the moment.’ A decent Google Plus search will make Facebook reassess that, because suddenly Google Plus would become kind of a memory bank for its users. The success of Evernote – a note-taking app which markets itself as an “online brain” – is an indicator that social networks need a longer memory.

3. Open up the API!

The Google+ API is limited to public data, so external developers won’t be able to tap into private data or information about Circles. It’s a no-brainer to eventually open it up and the Google Plus team has stated this will happen. Given that the entire Facebook platform is predicated on third party developers accessing private information about users, this can’t come soon enough for Google Plus if it wants to rapidly build its platform.

(If you aren’t sure what I mean by third party apps accessing your private Facebook data, just recall how many times you’ve clicked “yes” to a web app that requests to be able to write to your Facebook wall and seemingly do anything it else it pleases with your data.)

Update: Google engineer Will Norris questioned the above statement, in Google Plus of course: “remind me again why it’s in users’ best interest to rush out and enable that on Google+.” My response: it’s in users’ interest because they’ll get a ton of great third party apps that do wonderful things with their data. (and yes I admit it’s a double-edged sword)

4. Hurry up with pages for brands.

It’s common knowledge that Google Plus is working on implementing pages for brands, which will be similar to Facebook Pages. I’d like to see these pages be much more easily surfaced and organized in Google Plus than they are with Facebook. I often find myself ‘liking’ a brand page on Facebook, then never coming across it again because it’s hidden away. Why can’t I put my favorite brand pages in my main Facebook menu? Why can’t I add it immediately to a list when I ‘like’ it (instead of having to manually go to the list and put the new Page into it, which is time consuming).

Google Plus has the opportunity to create much more user friendly brand pages, which will only benefit both users and brands.

5. Find a way to entice my family and non-geeky friends onto Google Plus.

This may be the most important challenge that Google Plus faces if it’s truly going to challenge Facebook. While Google Plus has a fervent base of early adopter users, it hasn’t managed to attract mainstream people yet. I don’t have any statistical proof of that, but you only need to look at who you’re interacting with on Google Plus. For me it’s all industry people, which makes for a great social network if you want to discuss work matters. That’s why Robert Scoble loves Google Plus so much.

So far only one of my family members is using Google Plus – my i Pad 2-toting brother. And he’s using it mainly to make humorous references about the lack of people he knows on Google Plus. In contrast, all of my immediate family and a good portion of my extended family uses Facebook. Sure, it took years for them all to arrive there. But the point is, Google Plus needs to eventually find a way to entice them onto its service. Or maybe the fact that Google Plus will be such an intricate part of the future Google product line (search, e-commerce and so on) is what’s going to eventually get my family and others using Plus.

Those are 5 things I’d love to see from Google Plus, as soon as possible. I haven’t even mentioned the big complaint from recent weeks: Google Plus doesn’t allow people to select user names that aren’t their real names. This has been a controversial issue and it too needs to be resolved.

What else do you think Google Plus should do in order to keep the pressure on Facebook? And by the way, this ‘battle’ is great news for us consumers – as it forces both companies to give us what we’re clamoring for. And we won’t mind if a bit of big co blood gets spilled in the process.

Google doesn’t want businesses on google plus yet

Google plus is the hot new topic in social networking, and businesses along with individuals are finding it appealing.

Currently, as it is set up, Google plus is used mostly by individuals and so Google has asked businesses to refrain from joining Google plus for the moment. Christian Oestlien, Google plus’s product manager, says about this, “Right now we’re very much focused on optimizing for the consumer experience, but we have a great team of engineers building a similarly optimized business experience for Google plus.”

Oestlien is suggesting a variant to Google plus which will be tailored specifically to businesses. This is being developed currently. Oestlien also argues that the ways in which individuals interact with brands are very different than the ways individuals interact with each other, which is why Google is launching a more optimized platform for businesses.

Oestlien also said, “We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google plus users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”

He also added that Google will carry out tests in the months to come with marketing companies in order to study how Google plus may influence brands. Also, he explained that the Google plus business platform will include “rich analytics and the ability to connect that identity to other parts of Google that businesses might use on a daily basis.”

Social media like Twitter and Facebook have played significant roles in marketing and strategies for businesses in the modern world, and Google plus definitely wants to give businesses the same tools in the future.

In order to better understand these social networking platforms, Andre Frank, who is the research director for the Gartner Group, said, “some businesses have all but abandoned their own Web sites in favor of emphasizing their Facebook pages,” which may just reflect why several companies have jumped at the chance to join Google plus since it was launched.

Google is trying to discourage businesses from doing that, though, as they want businesses to wait for the proper platform to connect with individuals. According to Oestlien, the service for businesses will be available later this year so companies will not have much time left to wait. It will certainly be interesting to see how various companies use Google plus for marketing.