Businesses with a Google+ brand page are to appear within the search engine’s results page (SERP), according to IT Pro Portal.
Users with Google+ accounts can now quickly add social media content from a brand to their circles, comment on a post, or +1 it straight from Google’s SERP (search engine results page).
So far, only some of the biggest commercial players have been confirmed for inclusion as brands in the results page. These include Fox News, fashion retailer Macy’s and telecommunications giant AT&T.
The move will supposedly serve two purposes. Firstly it will promote the brand page for the benefit of the company who holds one and secondly, it will promote the Google+ social network itself to regular search users.
A Google representative confirmed in a statement to CNet that it will not weigh rankings for those with a Google+ account any differently to those without.
“The creation of a page will not influence your ranking in web results,” the spokesperson insisted. ”We are always improving our algorithms to provide the most relevant search results.”
They continued: “While Google+ Pages will be ranked like other search results, content from a page, such as recent posts, may appear as annotations attached to its associated Web page under the sitelinks when the latter appears as a regular search result.”
