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Google Changes Search Landscape With Introduction of Search, Plus Your World
Read moreOn Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012, Google made its most radical and forward step into true Social Search with the launch of Search, plus Your World. Your World, as described in the official Google blog post, changes search results for individual users in three key ways:
1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.
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How Rich Snippets Can Improve your CTR
Read moreRich Snippets structured markup code is a way to help publishers provide information about their websites to Google. While Google has admitted that Rich Snippets do not increase or have an effect on search engine rankings, the additional information provided by a Rich Snippet can be the difference between a user clicking to a site or passing it over (possibly for another listing that does provide Rich Snippets?). To better gauge the effectiveness of Rich Snippets and how click-through-rates (CTR) are affected, I decided to run a test to prove and confirm the significant difference (if one existed) on user behavior with Google Rich Snippet data.
