Google+ and the objectivity of search

For a while I've been wondering how Google would keep from allowing their personal interest in entering the social networking arena from affecting their objectivity in the business of "Search". Well, the results are in! Coincidentally just a day after speaking about just this subject with my colleague Steve Downes (@stevejuice), Mashable published this story about the search results and rankings of Twitter pages vs. Google+ when conducting a Google search ( http://mashable.com/2012/01/12/google-twitter-social-search-at-symbol/).

The findings are not shocking, and yet still, I find myself quite annoyed. The article points out the fact that Google has not, in the 8+ years of Twitter, decided to index the "@" symbol for its search algorithm. As covered in the article, this means that searching for a brand or person's Twitter page there is no search priority for the results of "@mktgba" or "mktgba". What this means is that a brand's Twitter page will show up in order of relevance at the same position regardless of adding the @ symbol to your search query. However, Google has indexed its own "+" sign; thus prioritising its Google+ page results to the top in any search including this symbol.

As an additional benefit to Google+ users, Google search crawlers will pull content from Google+ pages, while not pulling from brands Facebook or Twitter pages (admittedly because they are "private") thus meaning that Google+ pages will have a larger effect on SEO.

What does all this mean? It means that Google is clearly allowing its interest in succeeding in the social networking arena to effect its objectivity in search. While social networking has had a huge boom over the past 3 years, search (as an industry) is still widely considered the most important facet of a business's online priorities. By controlling the world's most dominant search engine, Google is able to greatly affect the positive value of having a Google+ page. However, is this really fair? And even if Twitter or Facebook get an injunction against such self-serving practices will it be too late? Will Google+ be able to utilise this competitive advantage for long enough to reach a critical mass? Google+ is growing at an extraordinary rate at the moment and while usage (once a member) still remains low, it could be a threat in the near future.

I don't believe that Google+ will challenge Facebook or Twitter, anytime soon, for consumer engagement (consumers already have invested too much time and data in those two sites) however the precedent of bias algorithms for search is a serious issue. What obligation does Google have to ignore competitive pressures and just provide the BEST results? Don't they owe us a certain level of trust and impartiality?