Just yesterday, Brafton reported that Google News unveiled a "Most Shared" news tab. Now, it seems News results included with general web results are also displaying shared data, and marketers […]

Just yesterday, Brafton reported that Google News unveiled a "Most Shared" news tab. Now, it seems News results included with general web results are also displaying shared data, and marketers who offer timely content may find their pages can become socially recommended industry info sources for consumers.

The Most Shared tab currently available in Google News displays the internet's top News results for cross-industry topics, but the "Shared By" info for news related to web searches offers insight on news sharing related to specific search terms. The image included with this article shows that a search for "Google Groupon" offers news content as the top result, and each story within the News result is accompanied by the article's individual Shared By number.

When users click for more News results, the Shared By data seems to disappear. Still, having the information included in News portions of web results designates highlighted news articles as socially supported answers to queries. This feature rewards brands that offer industry news, as their content can now be marked as socially relevant and query-specific.

Google tested similar features for all of its web results – News and otherwise – earlier this year. As Brafton reported, the company experimented with including "Shared By" and "Recent Update" elements under all results. This suggests Google is increasingly focusing on social components (and notably, the site may also be refining its algorithm to give preferential ranking to human-supported sites).

Moreover, these recent updates to Google News and News results suggest that the company is willing to reward brands that offer timely, industry-relevant content with valuable social referrals. As Brafton has reported, social content marketing will be key to catching clicks in 2011. 

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.