Yesterday Google unveiled their latest "improvement" to social networking; Google+. Here is the info (pasted from my adsense account) straight from Google on how the new system works: "Adding the +1 button to your pages allows users to recommend your content to friends and contacts on Google search. As a result, you could get more and better qualified traffic." It seems like a good idea, but ultimately this could be a major misstep for Google. This system, unless closely monitored, is ripe for manipulation � just like Facebook and YouTube � and will ultimately prove unreliable in providing better search results.
Now before you start going crazy about how Google+ is so much more than a glorified "like" system and that is supposed to be the new Facebook, I'm not referring to these features. I'm referring to the fact that Google has specifically stated that these results and opinions might � and most likely will � have an impact on their actual search results. My critique is on this angle, not the content it provides in its pseudo-wannabe-Facebook-anti-wall system. This is purely aimed at search results and their ability to be manipulated.
Look at YouTube, the site has quality content, but more often than not, top videos for any search query are not the best quality or most relevant, they are just the most heavily promoted. When you search for any given topic on YouTube � especially trending topics � you are bound to get mislabeled and poorly made advertisement videos, stolen videos with affiliate links, and videos with the most "views" or "likes". The truth is you can spend $5 to promote a video by hiring outsourcers to watch and rate it with their YouTube accounts. How do I know this? I've done it, but for free.
When Michael Brea, an actor from the series Ugly Betty killed his mother with a sword on November 23, 2010 the news story was trending like crazy. I had seen a technique on how to get a video to t he top of YouTube when a trending topic began so I decided to try it out. I simply turned on the news, took out my video camera, and filmed the TV. I then uploaded the story, used some simple manipulation, and received 15,000 views in the first day. It cost me $0. The video now has nearly 27,000 views and shows up nearly at the top when you search for Michael Brea on YouTube.
So what's my point? Well if Google+ works anything like YouTube it will be easily manipulated and simply gamed by marketers and advertisers. No trending topic is safe and no organic search using Google+ can be trusted; it's just a terrible system that has not been refined enough to warrant utilizing it for search purposes. When it comes to Facebook the same thing rings true. I don't get updates from friends, they are all updates from pages I never signed up for, or put a "like" on their fan page, but thankfully no more Farmville or mafia war updates. But the truth is, Facebook is now domina ted by advertisements � and I didn't even sign up for them! These posts have the most "likes" and comments, and thus shoot to the top of your update list. Marketers can also pay outsourcers, just like YouTube, to like and comment on their posts and therefore push them up in your update list � Facebook has gotten so out of control you can literally just pay for friends now!
This system has failed. It is merely a way of getting more advertisements into your social media. It seems like a great idea, and sometimes on Facebook and YouTube it works, but more often than not, it's merely a gamed and flawed results system; it's is too easily manipulated to be trusted. When Google performed their Panda update they effectively killed content farms and article directories because they were providing bad results and people were complaining. How long before your entire search results are merely paid Google+ manipulations and people start complaining about it? Just look at the SEO game before Panda came out, it was a joke, I could write an article and have it pop to the top 5 results for a competitive keyword in 72 hours.
While this won't be the utter disaster that Google Wave was, it will ultimately fail to produce the results Google wants. In the rush to make everything social-media-ized companies like Google and Facebook keep forgetting their reason to exist. When it comes to Facebook, people were seeking refuge from MySpace and their relentless advertising � only to be inundated with ads on Facebook; it makes you wonder if eventually we will have to switch to a new social media platform. All people want from Google is the best results possible for a given keyword, they don't want ads, they don't care about if someone "plused" a page; they want results. With this approach Google is getting further and further away from what made them so popular in the first place � great search results. If the technology and know-how was these to make this ranking system successful, then I'm all for it, but at this point the technology and ability to improve results is not there.
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