Google has been THE search engine for quite a few years now, their market share has floated above the 60% mark despite millions of dollars being spent by Bing in advertising.

But some of the recent updates and news coming from Google gives me the impression they may feel their products and technology is slipping.

There is no doubt the internet is changing. Social media is now a huge part of the way people browse the web. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Yelp or Foursquare – people are no longer heading to search engines as their sole source of answers. This is something that Google knows it needs to be involved in – but has failed miserably at.

We can look to Google Buzz and Google Wave as prime examples of their attempts at social media and the way people communicate – and their latest release, +1, is the latest attempt to take on the social market. But what exactly does +1 tell us about Google? It tells us they need our help.

Google’s goal is provide the best user experience to the end user. That is why they have such a sophisticated algorithm and why they use quality score for paid search. Over the past 6 months Google has been very public about the Panda Update and asking us as users to help them report spam sites by blocking them from search results. That along with +1 lets us know they know they believe their current algorithm and technology is not capable of providing users with the best search results possible. They need to include another level of user based input to do so. And that level is the information they can get from +1 and our social media profiles.