This is a guest post by Dominic on Google SPYW and its impact on eCommerce. You can read the guidelines for guest posting at our guest posting guidelines page.

With search and social seemingly getting more and more tangled up in Google and Bing’s algorithms, search engine optimizers cannot ignore social media – close your eyes and accept it, you have to if you want to keep up. Bing incorporates Facebook data into its search results. Now Google have taken a giant and some might say taken a risky step with the introduction of Search Plus Your World (SPYW).

In a nutshell if you are signed into your Google account your search results will be stirred up and will now include content such as links, images and videos that have been shared by friends in your Google + social network as well as the traditional search results. If this is new to you please visit here for more info.

In this article I want to talk about how this new feature will affect your search engine results…..

Google SPYW and Search Results Visibility

The biggest and most obvious impact on search results is visibility, Let’s pretend I am the user in the official video on here to compare the potential results.

The results from Google SPYW are definitely more visually appealing with more product images and thumbnails of people in my Google+ circles that have shared content on this subject. It is also more entertaining than the usual results as it is full of opinions from people in my circles. So if I want to be entertained and get a review of a product or service by people who are more likely to influence my decision then Google SPYW is great.

However Google SPYW is only as powerful to you as the people you have in your Google+ circles, If we use the example in the video, the people in my circles have shared content and opinion on paperclips in the past making Google SPYW really useful to me for that particular search term.

Let’s say that one day I decided that I wanted to research some new shoes for an event in the future, I go to Google and find more traditional search results, but a lack of Google SPYW results for this query making my purchase decision a little bit more difficult.

It would be easy to find the conclusion that Google SPYW could not be that relevant for ecommerce SEO. But that premise is based on my interactions on Google + so far which will determine the deeply personalised results I will receive on Google SPYW. For a start most people in my Google+ circles are web developers or are in the SEO industry, so opinions on shoes are not on their radar. Most of these people are also on Facebook and Twitter and if they were ever going to offer their opinion on shoes it would most likely be on there.  Also I haven’t ‘+1’d any shoe brands. All of these factors specific to my interactions in Google+  limit Google SPYW’s usefulness in an ecommerce query for “shoes”.

So my mission is to transfer more of my friends on Facebook and Twitter, which are more varied onto Google+ which will build the strength of my circles giving me more informed SPYW results.

So How Can Ecommerce Sites Benefit From Google SPYW

You are an ecommerce site battling it out there with the competition in the SERPS, how can you improve your visibility using Google SPYW?

Here are a few points to get you started:

• If you don’t already have a Google+ business page, set one up.

• Share content on Google+ regularly, this means sharing product images, videos, news and updates and of course links to products. Maybe even some personal opinion.

• Build your network. It does you no good to post content if you don’t have a group of followers to share it with. One way to do this is by adding a Google+ link to your website that links to your Google+ page. In addition, add the +1 button to product pages, which enables people to recommend your products and services. Once people add your page to their Circles, add them back.

Top Tip to benefit from Google SPYW

• Make it easy for fans to +1 content on your ecommerce site

Arming an ecommerce site with sharing buttons is quite like outsourcing your social media to your customers. A marketing team can only share so much content on its own and quite often that content sounds just like marketing. Potential customers can spot this content a mile away which makes opinions by customers (especially good ones) critical to your social success which could have a big affect on your bottom line.

About the Author:

Dominic Lidgett is a blogger who writes about a variety of different online marketing topics. Check out more of his work at seo hull. Don’t forget to tell us how Google SPYW has changed the way you do business.