In August 2011, Google made an announcement that Google+ results would also be found in Google search results. This development has since changed the definition of what social media marketing used to be. Previously, there were very strong lines between social networking and search. With the blurring of these lines, things have become more complex, while the Internet landscape has improved altogether.

Google+ is basically Google's attempt at creating a social networking website, similar to Facebook. The main objective of this project is to get ahead of Facebook, both in terms of users as well as advertising revenues. Google has integrated many of its other successful products with Google Plus, some of which include Picasa, Gmail and Google Maps. This will enable users who have signed up with Google+ to share photos and other information from a single point.

The Plus profile of each user will be centred on the 'Stream', which is similar to Facebook's news feed, where one can view the latest actions/updates they said one's friends. It will also include other features called Circles, Huddles, Hangouts and Sparks. About integrating Google+ posts with search engine results, Google says that only those people who are signed-in to Google+ will be able to view posts of their friends in Google search results. These posts only include those posts that have been shared publicly.

As search engine marketing (SEM) continues to evolve, digital marketing pundits expect search engines to modify their algorithms to include more signals from social media in their results pages. There may even come a time, somewhere in the future, when social media signals are given a higher value than traditional incoming links. The main reason why this prediction has come about is because a very low percentage of overall websites regularly publishes engaging content, leaving links in the hands of a few websites only.

By considering links from social media and other signals, search engines will be able to gather inputs from a massive base of people, which is expected to increase the relevancy of their search results. This means that digital marketing professionals should do their utmost to keep fans and followers of their clients engaged on social networks, in the hope that links to their main landing pages will be generated. This does not mean copy-pasting ordinary content from other websites, but creating interesting content that will encourage users to share it with their friends.