Well today is a great day for us here at Upstream Connections. We have been shortlisted in the Best SEO Campaign category for the UK Search Awards. We are extremely proud of being shortlisted for “Recognition of a campaign that has achieved outstanding results in search engines in natural, free or organic listings”.

Some of the biggest names in search are on the judging panel which makes being shortlisted even more prestigious.

• Bas van den Beld, Founder, State of Search
• Dave Coplin, Director of Search, Consumer and Online UK, Microsoft
• Nick Garner, Head of Search, Unibet
• Richard Gregory, Chief Operations Officer, Latitude & UK Chair, SEMPO
• Neil Hardy, Head of e-commerce, Midcounties Co-operative
• Peter Jordan, Strategic Search Manager, government Digital Service
• Judith Lewis, Head of Search, Beyond
• Philip Miles, UK Director for Agencies, Google UK
• James Murray, Marketing and Research Analyst, Hitwise UK
• Jon Myers, Director, Account Management UK and Ireland, Yahoo!
• Peter Young, Head of SEO, Brilliant Media

The awards will be presented at an awards dinner at the Emirate Stadium, on the evening of Thursday 3 November 2011, so fingers crossed until then!

So yesterday Google began to open up the real potential of Google+ with a newly released API allowing third party development. This is Google stepping it up a gear and now the real development can begin!

For those of you who don’t know what an API is, it is short for Application Programming Interface. Basically it allows third parties to develop programmes that can interact with the host, in this case Google+. Some you may be familiar with are Klout for twitter and Farmville on Facebook, these are developed by separate companies but use the information from the host.

The Google+ API opens the door for initial development for companies such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social. They rely on the API for their product and it will become a race to see who can get the best Google+ integration.

This is great for anyone who uses any kind of social media engagement tool.

However it is not as great as it sounds. Yet. Currently the API is limited to basic user information and does not include circles. The other main drawback is that it is a read only API which means that it is not possible to post from any third party app yet. It has been announced by Google on their blog that there will be further developments and I would speculate that the inclusion of circles will come alongside the ability to post as it is the next logical step.

We are all familiar with third party applications whether you know it or not. The authorisation process is the same as on every other network that is out there. See below for an example of an authorisation notification:

How does this affect you business?

Well currently it doesn’t really, but it is a great sign that after only 3 months of limited release there is an API out there. Google mean business this time and are doing everything they can to keep the buzz alive. That’s THE buzz not Buzz, because we all know how well that went. The developers are the best people to keep interested and an API is basically cat nip for them.

It will be great if there is a solid base of apps that can be used with Google+ when the business pages are finally released, it will make the platform far easier to capitalise on.

Now this is the first time we have talked about Google+ on our blog so I will give you a brief run down of where we are.

So Google are taking another punt at becoming a social media superpower, let’s hope for their sake it pays off and has more success than Buzz! Anyway, we are seeing a hybrid between Facebook and Twitter. You can follow anyone and anyone can follow you but you don’t have to be mutual friends like you would on Facebook it is more of a Twitter way of “friending”. The major selling point that Google have gone for is a simple usability and fantastic privacy settings and I have to say, they have done a fantastic job of it. But before you run off to sign up, it is currently invite only and there is a distinct lack of business pages. This is because currently its still in testing so only the likes of Ford and Mashable have pages.

It is now becoming clear though that Google+ can help your rankings, the basic concept is around social search. Google+ has a “like” feature called +1, this can be done on any page that has the button embedded in it. In this sense it is similar to Facebook, however Goolge+ is of course owned by the biggest search engine in the world and what sense would it make if the giant didn’t incorporate their +1s into the search algorithm? None. Which is exactly why they have.

From what we have seen so far is that as soon as someone you follow on Google+ +1s a page then that will show up for you on the first page for any related search. An example of this is a search for “search news” returns the top news sites on the first page but also as I follow Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land and he has shared their page it comes up on page 1 with his endorsement shown below.

The search term was "search news"

It will be very interesting to see if +1s from non friends will affect the rankings. I think it is a given that they will affect the rankings but the interesting part will be how big the effect actually is. What do you think and are you on Google+ yet?