Hello and welcome to another edition of ‘7 Days of Search and Social‘. I hope this edition finds you well.

Lead Story

The Impact of Google +1

Just for a change, I thought this week we could look at a topic, instead of a news story. Change can be good right?

What caught my eye was a discussion over on the social site for search geeks, Sphinn. The topic at hand was the same as the title here reads;

The Impact of Google +1

I do miss having the inclination to participate in discussions, old forum hound ya know, and it is often quite edu-taining to get a sense of what others in the space make of the various changes.

For me, this change, isn’t all that important so far. As it has been said, if it’s not affecting rankings, it’s not really an explicit feedback signal now is it? Far more telling, since +1 is actually just a Google Labs toy, was the changes to social search back just before the Panda affair hit the scene.

Anyway, some good reading. I hope to start hanging at Sphinn more often in the coming weeks. Join me.

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Going Vertical – Videos – Tools – Patents –

Talk of the Town

Double Column Organic Google Results, oh my! – it is always interesting to see Google testing things. Seems Rishi found a very interesting result, which sadly cannot seem to be replicated. Anyone else seen these?

Exact Match Domains: This is Why They Can Still Rank – for many of us the power of exact match domains is a real pain in the arse (unless U own one). This post does a reasonable job of looking at some of the reasons it happens.

The Unexpected Perks of Ranking 1st on Yahoo!, – once more, some interesting insight from the gang over on the Distilled blog. I often lament there is waaaaay too much Google chatter. Nice to see some talk of the other engines.

Google Throws the Book at Competitors – while I sometimes giggle at Aaron’s tin-foilish rants, sometimes he’s just damned right. There is a real and present risk in Google being ‘everywhere’, playing by their own rules should be mandatory.

Google: Marissa Mayer Bypassed As Google Appoints New Head Of Local And Commerce – Business Insider had some interesting reporting that almost seems to tie into the lead story from last week (on the troubles in the house of Google). One does have to wonder what’s going on over there.

How Google Instant’s Autocomplete Suggestions Work – was an awesome post from Danny that delves into the Google feature and how it works. There was also some interesting follow-ups, in the form of; 3 White Hat Ideas To Optimize Google Suggest Results and Google Autocomplete Suggestions and the Meaning of Life