Owning Your Content In Search: Google Now Makes It Easier To Link Your Website To G+
Last year, Google announced an initiative to give authors on the Web greater ownership over their content and more visibility in search. Google Authorship, as its known, has changed consistently since launch …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had already begun placing Google+ social context inside results in 2011, including the number of a searcher’s Google+ circles connected to a result. The easier site-to-Google+ association extends that search integration from audience signals toward clearer ownership and author identity for web content.
First-order effects
- Website owners and authors have a lower-friction route to connect their sites and Google+ identities, making Google Authorship’s ownership and search-visibility features easier to adopt.
- Google gains more standardized associations between indexed sites and Google+ identities, reinforcing Google+ as part of its search presentation layer.
Second-order effects
- Publishers seeking search visibility have greater incentive to maintain a Google+ presence alongside their websites, rather than treating the social network as a separate distribution channel.
Third-order effects
- If adoption spreads, search optimization shifts further from page-level signals alone toward verifiable relationships among content, publishers and Google-controlled identity services.
The trend: Google is tying social identity more tightly to search visibility, making content attribution a product feature as well as a publisher concern.