[earl]

Google+ is close to blackmail. Read what Rand from seomoz has written about it [1:2] (example quote: "[...] if SPYW continues to roll out to all logged-in Google users and Google stays as aggressive as it's been in the last 10 days with pushing Google+ for even logged-out users, the service will become a necessity for search and social marketers"). Google is using their dominance in search to create side benefits for using google+: you get your picture in organic results and massively increased clickthrough, amongst other benefits, by putting your content into google+ and playing the + game. This is a step past seo: seo was optimizing for google's algo, but now google's ranking algo forces you to push and likes/pluses content into their system. So once your competitors start using it, you have to as well.

Also, as you pointed out, I dislike social and dislike that products like that continue to intrude into my search results.

[1] http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-every-marketer-now-needs-a-go...

[2] another rand video I can't find right now

[jrockway]

How do you feel about non-social things in your search results, like maps or videos? If pictures are a big deal in SEO, it seems like everyone would be communicating via video. Ultimately, I think relevancy is what "converts" people.

Also, I don't get the big push on "SEO". Just buy an ad and now you're above all the organic results anyway.

[amstr]

Regarding SEO: The Facebook "Like" button for instance has been embeddable on any page for awhile now and affects results for FB searches, ads, etc. So people have been playing the "Facebook Like" game alongside generalized SEO for awhile now and have not found it terribly difficult. In fact the "+1" is pretty much a clone of the "Like" button, so what's novel here?