There are a few big things Google have been doing this week in what you might call a full on attack of your senses, or what I choose to call a few big things. There are three changes that are really worth a look, one is all about how Google looks, one is all about the future of Google to the user and the other is about the future of social media marketing and where it stands from a webmaster's point of view.
Google's New Design
Let's start with perhaps the most obvious change and the one that you have probably noticed already. Design; Google has seemingly had an identity crisis and in its haste has redesigned near enough everything; from the search engine, to Gmail and Google Calender. There is a new black navigation bar at the top, the links on the left of the search page are red and black and there have even been some significant changes made to the appearance of AdWords ads (which I will cover in a moment). All of these changes result in a look for Google that is somewhat 'emo', perhaps a reflection on the mood caused by Bing's current level of pace in the race to catch up.
Is this a good change? My first impression is that the new search engine design is a little self indulgent, something an impartial resource website should never be accused of. What do I mean by self indulgent I hear you ask. Well, one of Google's major strengths in its rise to the forefront of modern business is that it always employed a function over form approach to its services. The main beneficiary of this has been the search engine which can handle more data than you can shake an almanac at without feeling the need to throw pretty styling at you. I think the new style represents more than just a superficial change, it represents a fundamental shift in how Google runs its business, no more does Google want to be known as the unassuming geek who knows everything, but the sylish brainbox who has the looks as well as the brains. A risky formula that smells a bit of 'if it isn't broken then don't fix it'.
For the conspiracy theorists amongst you, one theory is that Google has decided to change the style of all of their products in such an unprecedented manner because of the launch of Google+ (which as it happens is my next topic of conversation). You see, Google's last outing into the social arena was every part the 'geek', with Google Buzz failing in spectacular fashion. Keen not to have Google Buzz comparisons the first thing on blogger's and techie's lips, you might say that Google is using the unprecedented move of a wholesale re-design as a digital gobstopper that will move Google Buzz comparisons further down the news agenda. It is a common political tactic; unleash your bad news when there is something huge happening, like an Olympic opening ceremony or a war. Well, Google's 'war' is its new design, and the clanger it has just dropped is another attempt at social media. It's just a theory...
Google Plus Social Media
Those of you who are up to date on their Google news will have spotted the 'pun' in the heading above, and those who aren't will just see a rubbish headline, sorry. The next piece of big Google news is that Google is about to have another stab at the holy grail of web 2.0, social media. Like Pinky and The Brain, this time Google will take over the world and they will be doing it with something called Google+. First off, I must say that Search Engine Land was spot on in pointing out that Google+ is an incredibly frustrating name from a grammatical point of view. Stick it at the end of a sentence before an exclamation mark and you are in all kinds of linguistic troubles. Thankfully I don't care that much, so I will plough through regardless.
Google+ is essentially Facebook, with a video chat feature and a Google logo stuck on. One of the features that bloggers are focusing on at the moment is one called 'Circles' which allows you to categorise your friends (and enemys) into groups called, circles. Once you have completed your social taxonomy you will be able to post things to different groups of people. This means that rather than annoy everyone at once with your useless musings, now you can pin point your opinions to the people least likely to react with violence.
There is another interesting feature that lets you hold a video conversation with multiple people at once. I struggle to chat with my mum on Skype without constantly interrupting her by accident, let alone chatting to 5 people. Sadly I do not have any access to Google+ yet, so my opinions mean less than nothing, but there are some fantastic reviews online that are worth reading, most notably from Search Engine Land: Google+ The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and SEO Moz: The New Google Social Network.
Social Media Tracking
Last but certainly not least, to the joy of social media gurus the world over, Google have finally given them a way of justifying their existence in the form of social media reports in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. No longer will social media experts have to consult a thesaurus every time they need to justify their work in new and elaborate ways but the impact of all of the work will be there to see, in nice graphs and numbers and facts that business people can scratch their chins to. If that doesn't deserve a 'like', 'share' or '+1' then I don't know what does.
Aside from all of my tomfoolery this is a genuinely massive step forward in terms of digital marketing and I predict we will see the adoption of social marketing structures quite rapidly. Adobe's latest Scene 7 Digital Marketing Trends report shows that analytics solutions are the most adopted tactics by businesses surveyed and is also rated highly in terms of effectiveness. Also in the report is that social media, although growing in uptake and planned implementation is yet to justify its hype. I believe we could be about to see this change and I for one am looking forward to getting into the reports and seeing what social media really does for business online.
