“Ask On Google+” Links Appearing In Google’s Search Results

The invasion of Google+ into Google’s search results continue. The latest Google+ification? Now Google’s encouraging people at the end of its search listings if they “Want to ask your friends about” what they were Googling.

Want To Ask Your Friends?

Tom Critchlow tipped me off to spotting this in his search results. I checked, and I found the same thing happening for me:

You can see that I’ve done a search for “sopa,” and at the bottom of the results, I’m prompted:

Want to ask your friends about sopa? Ask on Google+

While I see this, some of my other Search Engine Land editors do not. So, it might not be happening to everyone. It also doesn’t happen if you’re signed out of Google.

Good Idea, But Not For Every Query

The feature is helpful, in that I’ve written before that people do turn to their social networks to get questions answered. It makes huge amounts of sense to provide this type of prompt, especially if a search engine can detect that someone is having particular difficulty with a question.

However, there’s no particular intelligence going on behind this prompt. It shows up for every search, which means you can have lots of fun with it. For example:

Somehow, I think if I ask my friends on Google Plus, “How do I search on Google,” they’ll laugh at me. This is, by the way, an actual popular search that people do. If you don’t know how to search on Google, or want to search better, see our How To Use Google To Search page.

Here’s another fun one:

Given the sometimes fanboy nature of Google Plus, I’m pretty sure if I ask, “How do I share a link on Facebook,” I’ll be told to go back to Facebook.

This was my favorite:

How do I make friends on Google Plus? “Ask on Google+,” I’m encouraged!

Asking Your Question

If you do click on the “Ask on Google+” link, a little overlay window appears:

That’s filled with the text of what you want to ask, prefaced by this:

Hi there! I have a question about….

For fun, you can do this search on Google+ to see who is actually asking questions using this standard greeting (so far, not many people).

After you post the question, it appears at the top of your Google+ stream and is shared with whomever you indicated:

Helpful, But Feels Like More Google+ Intruder

Like I said, it is a useful feature for any search engine to offer, perhaps long overdue. But some more intelligence behind when this prompt it appears would be useful. And it still comes across as yet another way that Google+ is injecting itself into Google’s search results.

I joked today that seeing how Google+ keeps creeping into Google’s search results makes me want to change the lyrics of Bedroom Intruder to begin, “It’s climbin’ in your Google, it’s snatching up your results….”

Now go watch Bedroom Intruder and laugh:

[youtube width=”560″ height=”315″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw[/youtube]

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