Focus on the User, a concerted effort of prominent web companies, suggests that brands' social marketing efforts across different networks should be promoted in Google's Search, plus Your World results (instead of pushing only Google+ pages).

Marketers might like the potential for their Google+ pages to be promoted on SERPs thanks to Google’s recent social search updates, but some think this gives Google+ too much dominance over other social marketing efforts. “Focus on the User,” a service from engineers from Facebook and Twitter along with other social networks, is a project aimed at forcing Google to integrate social accounts from all networks into its Search, plus Your World results.

As Brafton reported, Google’s Search, plus Your World integrates Google+ data into SERPs to provide users with a complete search experience. This includes a people and pages feature that displays related Google+ accounts when users type in industry-specific queries as well as the promotion of brands’ Google+ accounts in suggested searches or on brands’ SERPs. However, other major social media companies have voiced their concerns with SPYW since it only showcases Google+ accounts, which the opposing companies believe is both unfair and a poor representation of the social web.

Essentially, Focus on the User is calling for Google to integrate all social media content into its search results. As part of its campaign, Focus on the User has launched a bookmarklet, essentially a bit of code, that allows users to see what Search, plus Your World would look like if Google included brands’ pages from all social networks in its results based on Google’s own search rankings. For example, the company points out that actor Hugh Jackman’s Twitter page has a higher organic ranking than his Google+ page when users search for “Hugh Jackman,” so a Focus on the User SERP places his Twitter account above his Google+ account in SERPs where Jackman’s social presence is promoted.Focus on the User demonstrates the different between results containing just Google+ data and those with data from all social networks.

Focus on the User rightfully suggests that it would make more sense for Google to honor its own system of “relevancy” in terms of brand pages’ organic rankings from all networks and include the social results that regular search results would suggest are most relevant to the user.

Search, plus Your World has met some scrutiny since its launch. Aside from the concerns of other prominent web companies, 45 percent of searchers say they don’t like the idea of social data being include in their search results.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.