On its Google News Blog, Google announced the addition of the Spotlight button to its News SERPs to show searchers which of their Google+ followers +1’d a certain story. Currently, it is not believed to impact the ranking of the links themselves.
Integrating Google+ into search will help Google provide a better integrated web experience for their logged-in users. Moreover, socially shared content appearing on multiple platforms will help Google generate more traffic for its social network.
The addition of +1 button on news content pages has given Google a push in terms of content shared on Google+. Moreover, Brafton reported recently that the release of the Google+ API has resulted in the integration of the service on third-party client apps, such as HootSuite and Involver.
Making it as easy as possible for Google+ users to post and share content will improve the overall popularity of the website. From there, the social media marketing appeal for Google+ will continue to grow. Brafton recently reported that 61 percent of the top 100 global brands are currently using Google+ Pages to augment their social media marketing presence since the feature launched two weeks ago.
