Google Social Circle | How Hotels Can Benefit

According to the Google Blog, "We were excited by the number of people who chose to try it out {Social Search Experiment in October}, and today Social Search is available to everyone in beta on google.com." Social Search enables Google to deliver more relevant content on the front page created by people you know and trust. Google users will now see results directly from connections via Twitter, Facebook, RSS, Flickr & Picasa, and subscriptions using Google Reader.

For the hospitality industry, this brings new light to online reputation management and the importance of maintaining your social media networks. Social Circle is the users' extended network of online contacts found through your Google accounts or links setup in your Google Profile. Universal search saturates the front page with results from local, images, videos, blogs, news, and now "Results from people in your social circle." Hotels need to engage in social media marketing strategies which compliment their organic efforts. For example, a search for "san francisco international airport hotel" in Google has over 15 million competing web pages in which the Crowne Plaza SFO has positions 4 and 5 organically, but now they also saturate the bottom fold because of my Twitter connection with the hotel.

It's important to note that content is not only coming in from tweets, but directly from the hotel's website. Google provides a quick look under the hood by clicking on 'My social circle' to the right of your social search listing. Below you can see that my connection to the Crowne Plaza SFO via Twitter will also generate results from their site as the hotel Twitter account links back to their own website.

This means optimized content from your organic strategy can appear in the top ten, as well as a 'result from people in your social circle'. A niche search for "SFO park and fly hotels" displays an internal package page of the Crowne Plaza SFO's website, thus saturating the SERP with your listings.

In conclusion, Google's Social Search offers hoteliers another opportunity to reach their potential guests using social media channels. Social Search is the second tool from Google to connect users with content from social networks, following the recent release of Google's Real-Time Search. To learn more about Google Social Search, please visit Google's video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYf5iSA6t6g.