Blogs, Social Media Will Now Have a Greater Impact on Your Google Traffic

As you’ve probably noticed and/or read about, Google has rolled out its newly redesigned search results pages after experimenting for quite some time. Searchers are now met with a left-hand navigation panel similar to what is offered on other search engines like Yahoo, and Bing. The biggest difference is that this is Google and way more people use it.

There are other differences though. Most of the features here are not new. They’re options Google has been offering for about a year, but until now, users didn’t have them in their faces, and now you can expect searchers to do a lot more filtering of resuls based on the options Google gives.

Some of the options are pretty standard ones that have been visible in the past: images, videos, maps, and news for example. However, greater emphasis is now being placed on other types of results like: Blogs, Updates, and Discussions.

Blogs

Google Blog Search has been around for quite some time, but now users will notice it more. Instead of having to go to the Google Blog search engine itself or the "click to show options" link from a Google SERP, Blogs is simply a visible option for any given query. That means if people want to see commentary for the subject they searched for, there’s a good chance they’ll go to this set of results. If you needed another reason to blog for your business, this is a pretty good one.

Updates

Updates pulls from Google’s real-time search results. These have typically only showed up for newsy queries, but now for any given query, a user can actively choose to see what people are saying about it right now or most recently (on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Buzz, etc.). If you weren’t trying to get found in realtime search before, this is another reason to. It’s another reason to actively engage in social media discussion altogether

Discussions

Speaking of engaging in discussions, this section pulls from Q&A sites and forums. Consider this a reason to answer questions from people in such venues. Answering questions related to your niche or your products/services can reflect well upon your reputation and show people you know what you are talking about in a public setting. This stuff was always good for search, but now it has a dedicated option that is very visible to Google searchers.

Keep in mind that all of the options have sub-options for sorting results in different ways. Some results can be sorted by "nearby" which has big implications for local search. Look at the types of options Google is offering that you would expect your business to be found for, and optimize accordingly. This isn’t a new strategy, but now it’s more important for visibility.