Relevancy: The New Driving Force Behind Social Search

The idea of social search has evolved. With Google now feeding different types of media into its search results, search is now more universal than ever thanks to the incorporation of different types of listings into its result pages. Given Google's new parameters, a brand's video content, pictures, news feeds, and its website could each technically take up the first four listings on a search results page. This ranking dominance would help push a brand's competitors further down the page and almost out of the picture. So the importance of social activities is even higher given the new ground rules of universal search.

Google also views the concept of a social search in a different light in general. Their emphasis is on the relevancy of user-based search results. What this means is that two different users each performing the same search on their respective computers could potentially be returned slightly different search results because these results will be based on their previous click history.

Instead of feeding every user the same set of search results, Google feeds a list relevant to each individual person. This approach can drive more traffic to your brand's site because previously your listing might not have been in the spot deemed best for that user so you could have been missing out on clicks from relevant users. Without user-based search results, you would have a cookie-cutter approach whereas now you get a customized results page delivered to each searcher.

This relevancy-based personalization extends even to the paid search ads and where they are placed on the search results page. Pay-per-click ads that appeal to a specific user will be displayed in the specific places on the page where this user has previous clicked on ads. Google's functionality will serve the most relevant ad in the location where this user has clicked before based on his or her history. This helps your brand get its ads in front of exactly the type of user who would be most interested in and most likely to click on them, which makes your marketing dollars more efficient.

Relevancy is something you can control to a certain extent. For example, if no one clicks on your site during a given week, Google may lower it in the search rankings because the search engine is deeming the site's relevancy based on what users click on after their search queries. This is why press releases or some other form of traffic driver as well as fresh site content are important to do on a regular basis because it keeps traffic coming to your site and helps it maintain its relevancy.

A brand can also use Digg to build its site relevancy. Submitting content to Digg can help your site generate more traffic. The more relevant your content is and the more users who rate this content as relevant, the more traffic you'll be able to get and the higher up you'll go in the search rankings.

Google's relevancy approach is especially beneficial to a brand running an integrated SEO-PPC campaign because it targets your efforts to be delivered right to the users who have the most interest in your content and message. The approach helps users find what they are looking for, something Google is better at doing than anyone else. If you know the majority of your customer base is happy with and uses Google, it's a good idea to focus the bulk of your search budget and efforts around this engine. Focusing on just one search engine instead of several will help you get the most out of your investment and the user attention you want.