There are a lot of questions bouncing around about Google+ links and their impact and effect on rank. I will share what I feel confident about and also give you a road map of must read articles that once read, will really help you to feel more comfortable with what we do and don’t know about Google Plus, link building and sharing, and search rank.
Stream
First, for the link builder, the obvious. You post a URL in the “Share What’s New” box, below and share it with “Public”, or with one or more of your Circles.
The Google+ Share Box
You’ve now technically “built links”, because those URLs will appear on the timeline of whoever you shared them with.
So what does this do for the URL that was just shared? I believe it depends on who did the sharing, who is in their stream, and any existing link graph Google has for the shared URL.
If it’s a brand new URL, that could lead to a crawl, and if the URL was of quality in the first place, that will lead to natural attraction of links, tweets, pluses, etc., just like any other site/URL would.
What about Re-sharing of URLs? Great question. I think re-sharing of URLs will help surface the content in the SERPs, but it’s too early to tell just how much, and if it will be just for people with Google accounts who are signed in.
What about the text you include with the URL? Interesting thought. Quasi anchor text? semantic relvance? Both? Neither. What if they couple together Google Bookmarks with G+ shares? That could be useful, too.
This much is true. Google will have a massive amount of private URL sharing data that they didn’t used to have and which nobody else will have, so we have to expect this will affect SERP placement of those URLs somehow. But maybe not for a while, as we all find our way with Google+ decide how we will use it.
For example, I use Twitter like a news feed of what I want to read, as I only follow people who I know write something worth reading.
On Google+, I behave differently right now, as I’m still excited at the newness of it. I posted a picture of my 8 year old shooting a water gun at me, which I would never do on Twitter.
But this will change for all of us as we get more comfortable (or bored) within the Google+ environment.
Sparks
The obvious: You want your content (URLs) in sparks.
What remains to be seen is just how much control you will have on making that happen. And Google+ is letting a lot of crap in there right now. I saw a press release for a link building company in India in the Spark I created for link building and, well, have a look:
Incredibly NOT high value content I see in my Spark for Link Building
That’s in my Spark? Seriously? Pour water on it, it’s crap. Enough said.
Profile Links
The "Links" section from my G+ Profile
To the right is the Links section from my Google profile, accessible with Google+.
This really can’t be used for any meaningful link building for clients, but you can promote your own links.
I suppose I could add a list of client URLs, but I’m not that stupid. My clients don’t like being known that way, because they rank high, and because they’d rather keep people from nosing around their link profiles.
I’d suggest you add URLs here with extreme caution and discretion.
The Reading List
The remainder of this post is a reading list that I suggest will help bring some clarity to the fog that’s currently surrounding Google Plus and search rank.
I’m not saying all of these are correct or incorrect. They just provide perspective and detail I found useful.
I know after I had read these I felt much less worried that I was missing something important.
- Google+ 101: A Quick Introduction to Google’s Social Network
Nice post from Wendy Boswell at websearch.about.com that defines the Google+ terms: Circles, Streams, Hangouts, the Google+ toolbar, Profiles, +1′s, and Sparks.
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