Can We Stop, Turn Off, Disable Google Social Search Results? SEO Annoyances | To Quote Geoffrey Rush
“Well, ya best start believing in ghosts stories Ms. Turner, you’re in one!” Geoffrey Rush – Pirates…
Well, since about 18 February you may have noticed insertions of your own posts in the Google search results, kind of like ghosts of your online activity following you around in your searches.
Previously, Google published instructions on how to turn off features and their search results, specifically, personalized search results. However, the newest iteration of Google’s search results, “Social results”, comes to us, apparently, with no means to turn it off other than the obvious method of signing out of Google. If you are like me and use a Gmail address, chrome and Google extensions, you already know that signing out of Google is not necessarily what you want to do every time you want an unadulterated search result.
One Chrome extension that I use provides a numerical count, #1, #2 etc. in the search results but it is dependent on your being signed into Google. Alas social results are a permanent part of every Google account holder’s experience unless Google chooses to change things.
What this means for SEO experts and neophytes alike is that a new level of competition enters the arena; that is, competition against Google users’ historical data.
Well kids, we’d all better adjust hadn’t we? I don’t think Google has any intention of going back on the social media thing, not when they’re trying so hard to corner a piece of that market.
With respect to asking Google to turn this feature off, I think we’ll see a declination pretty much like another Jeffrey Rush quote, “in other words no!” It seems unlikely that we will be able to turn off, disable or otherwise stop this new “feature.”