Google has launched (and is now rolling out) a new social addition to its search results a Plus 1 Button, the button will allow users to recommend sites and share these recommendations with their friends.

Similar to Facebook’s “like” functionality it looks like we will start to see more and more reliance on the personal preferences of an individual surfer (and their friends) in the search engine results.

The recommendation will (where appropriate) influence the ranking within the organic search results.  The impact will be seen within the context of similar / relevant searches, even then the results are unlikely to catapult a site from zero to hero so no need to panic.  In short the likely impact will be to make certain sites more visible.

The company has used social clues from the likes of Twitter and Flikr to impact the results for over a year so this is part of a trend.

The feature will be extended to websites in due course.

I wonder how long it will be before someone link baits “Google Plus 1 Button the Death of SEO”.

What are your thoughts; obviously the button puts another tool into the arsenal of the search spammer.

The Search Engine Results in Google are becoming more and more influenced by efforts to personalise the results for the searcher. This is nothing new but I thought that the video below contained some interesting detail that many would be unaware of.

It now seems possible for UK businesses to submit to a third party site and thereby gain a local listing in Bing.

Bing Local Listings are similar to Google Local (or Google Maps) in that they can come up above the algorithmic (organic) search engine results when a searcher includes local place names in a search query, for example: “SEO Company Cheltenham” rather than just “SEO Company”.

Up until now I had assumed that Bing Local listing submissions could only be completed by US based companies, with the few UK based local search engine results being cobbled together from the listings on third party business directories.

All that changed after I read Matthew Elshaws’ Blog on ineedhits.com entitled “How to Setup a UK Bing Local Listing” where he talks about Daniel Dutton who has identified where Microsoft gets UK local business listings from, in his blog post entitled “Get Listed in Microsoft UK’s Bing/MSN/Live Business Directory”.

Anyway long story short if you are based in the UK and want to see if it works go to http://www.marketlocation.com/changereq/ and enter your company details.

Please note that this is rather speculative and it will probably take some time for results to be seen, so please no e-mails.  I have submitted my own site and put the word out about this and will let you know the outcome.

Justin March offers this set of instructions as ‘Guidance Only’. Therefore, Justin cannot be held responsible for any work carried out by YOU and/or ANY third party using the instructions.