Social Media is still growing an an exponential rate and its influence on search is growing day by day. In a recent Webmaster video Matt Cutts mentioned that something as simple as a tweet  by a reputable twitter user can play a role in organic search results.

Social Media is something that Google has been trying to successfully infiltrate for some time. The launch of Google profiles, Google Buzz and even Wave have all been attempts to grab a hold of the mass amount of people who utilize social media each day.

This week Google launched +1, a social voting system that allows searchers to ‘vote’ for a result on Google SERPs that they like. And if you are wondering, yes this is very similar to Facebook’s Like button.

The ability to vote or +1 a website or article will be dependent on you having a Google Profile. In all, there are three different experiences you can have with the +1 system, all depending on if you have a profile or if you are signed into it or not.

How Will It Affect Personalized Search?

The intriguing thing about this is that it will likely lead to a large increase sign ups for Google Profiles. As Google makes the +1 logo more prevalent on their SERPs, more and more people will be intrigued by it. Once clicked, they will be prompted to sign up for a Google Profile.

No doubt this will lead to an exponential rise in Google Profiles. This rise in number of profiles will also have a major affect on personal search. The more profiles, the more searchers who will view personalized search, thus leading to more and more searchers seeing results from within their network and not results that are solely affected by SEO.

With this in mind, it now becomes even more important for SEO’s, business owners and agencies to incorporate social media marketing alongside their search engine optimization campaign. While personal search does not ‘take over’ SERPs it can have a contributing affect to results.

We here at Front Street Consulting we’ll be keeping on eye on how this affects our clients traffic and conversions.