Within 2 weeks of its launch Google Plus has gained 10 million users and the number now reached to 20 millions. What is more interesting is that some websites have come up with ‘exciting offers’ of ‘Google +1 for Sale!”. You can get 50 to 2000 +1 clicks for your site by spending for a good buck.

The Questions
But the questions that are abuzz on the web are -

• What is the future of SEO with Google +?
• How is it going to affect SEO?
• What features of Google Plus can benefit SEO?
• How +1 can lead to better ranking?
• How to add +1 button to my site?

The Side Effects
SEOs are concerned about how the use of Google +1 button can be manipulated and how spammers can misuse it (one case is already mentioned above). And website owners are in a hurry to embed Google +1 button in their websites.

Plus One Reporter, a Google +1 automatic link checker is already available in the market. An internet software development company has built this utility software capable of generating report on the Google +1 count for a list of URLs.

Google+ Features that can Influence SEO

Now coming back to SEO, currently, there are two features in Google Plus that might prove beneficial in terms of SEO.

+1 Button: The +1 button as Google has mentioned is a way to tell your friends and acquaintances that “you should check this out”. While you plus-one a website to help your friends to find what they are looking for the plus-oned website definitely gets an advantage with this recommendation. So far it is available as long as you are logged in to your Google account.

Sparks: The Spark shows a bunch of recent news and updates of your interest. It not only quarries the most recent updates from the web it also provides user an option to share it in his/her circle. With this feature Google again establishes the importance of freshness of content.

Unlike Facebook that emphasizes on the most recent activities and creations Google’s search engine counts the age of the domain as a ranking factor. Now Google pioneering the world of search it is quite expected that the search engine giant may try to integrate its social media recommendation with its organic searches to take online search to the next level. Though keywords will be used to perform searches but the metrics of keyword selection will see some changes.

Ok, it is not just another social network as we have seen so far. As Google puts it – “Google Friend Connect provides a core set of social gadgets such as member management, message board, reviews, and picture-sharing”. And everything is there in a small java script so no coding required.

It would integrate your friends from other networks like Facebook, Linkedin, Google Talk, hi5, Orkut, or Plaxo apart from integrating with other open social applications.

So now, you can try to connect with the end users of your website in a better way and even connect with their friends.

Google Video was a big flop and they had to buy YouTube. Now, when Yahoo has bought MyBlogLog, Google has moved forward with a highly promising network.

I agree that, Google Friend Connect is a lot different from other networks like MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog – but in essence it is also a promotional network like these two. Isn’t it?

Let’s wait and watch:

Related stories from other sources:

Tech Crunch | Yahoo News | Read Write Web | Oreilly