The bottomline is that Google+ means you’re now working for Google! Huh? Well, YOU are doing the work. And what’s more, the quality of the output from Google results now includes what your Google circles have searched on.

Try it, do you really want Google - a great intent based directional search engine - to include what your co-worker or friend or family member has searched on. Where’s the church and state divide gone? The team at Mountain View, CA are now playing the social game that Facebook wrote the book on.

For the first time, Google is following Facebook - chasing down eyeballs and using a business model that isn’t their own. Google works just fine. I don’t need “Circles” to tell me what Google can already tell me pretty darn well.

Several of our clients are working with Google Maps Premier Edition - which offers some incredible functionality with respect to creating slicker interface designs, more customizable features and even has HTML5 compliance.

Click http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=114790027484863334369.00048ca58081513464dbe to view some of the applications in the Enterprise Edition. There are some incredible applications for mapping for optimization websites such as Asset Tracking but perhaps the biggest benefit is “Control of advertising” - so competitors can’t advertise on your locations!

If you don’t know, Google is monetizing their organic (left hand side) listings with the introduction of Place Pages. We are undertaken a lot of place page optimization and you’re welcome to download the briefs we’ve published on “Google Place Pages - Tips & Advanced Features“.

Whilst the pages are listings of information (name, address, phone, google map, opening hours, photo/youtube video upload, street view, etc), the implications for review websites can be seen in the battle Google is having with TripAdvisor. It’s clear that Google is driving revenue now. The results we see from many clients is that the Place Pages are generating more traffic than the individual website. That has massive impacts on the smaller end of the website development market.

SearchForecast continues to build out exciting technology for optimizing content on search engines. One of the key players on our technical team for the past three years has been Sham Haramalker who last year was married and has been instrumental in converting much of the architecture plans into code that drives our internal and client websites.

Sham is an expert in LAMP technologies and consistently innovative in open source code implementations. Now that he’s grown a moustache, he’s come of age and we hope he continues with his great work in 2011.

We extend our congratulations to the Campbell Family for a successful election victory in British Columbia, Canada - earlier this month. SearchForecast was able to provide some advice on search engine optimization for the campaign and provided online marketing advice to their campaign team. It is a fascinating process to be involved in given the constant media coverage and impact that search engines - like Google and Yahoo! - have on the imagery, messaging and perception the public at large has of political personalities and party policy.