Google just released a new feature and encouraged people to search for photos to see it in action.

If you found this picture / post when you did that, leave a comment below, add me to your Circles or Plus One this post.

As I told my Internet Marketing class last night, Google has been adding personalization into search for years.

In the past, they’ve boosted results that were near you: showing a local pizza place instead of one that’s 500 miles away. They’ve also increased the rankings of web pages that you’ve visited before or that your friends have shared via social networking.

Those changes were relatively minor compared to Google Search Plus Your World.

If you’re logged into a Google account, you’ll see a notice like this one:

When I searched for photos, my results showed image results from 2 friends plus a photo from my own G+ photo albums. There’s a new section in the right column with “People and Pages on Google+ related to photos” with suggested search results. I also see a couple of personalized websites in the normal organic results.

Privacy concerns?

While it might be unsettling to see your personal photos showing up on a Google search, they assure us that the photos that you have not shared with the “Public” are not visbile to everyone. If you’ve already shared the photos with family and friends via Google+ Circles, those people will be able to see them. Nobody else will see your private photos when they do a Google search.

It’s common for Google to make small adjustments to how they rank and display results, but the new Search Plus Your World is a massive change. In another post, we’ll look into how you can take advantage of this change to get more visibility for your business, your organization or your brand.

Help me test how the new search works and I’ll share my findings with you. Two ways you can help:

1) Leave a comment here about how you found this or +1 this post and comment @ G+.
2) Add me to your G+ circles and then search for photos. Did this post show in your results?