Whether you like it or not, Google owns most of the share of search engine traffic. Therefore, it’s important to pay attention to whatever Google is doing, including Google+. Google+ seems to want to be the Facebook, Twitter and Skype all rolled into one. And, it’s succeeding. But, the reason you need to be involved with Google+ is that Google Search is going to rank your involvement with their social media higher than they would someone else’s social media tools.

* Google Adwords – Linking the two together with social extensions is an important way to ensure that all your plus 1s are linked for search purposes. When your Google+ count shows up in search engines, users are more likely to click through.

* Google Authorship – This is a very important way to claim any writing you’ve authored. It also influences click-through rates because the listing shows your picture, along with increasing page rank of such results.

* Local Optimization – Search results are now very personal and take into consideration the location of a signed-in user, even if the searcher does not put their location in when searching for something. This is useful for local businesses but all business types can take advantage of local search.

* Latest Activity – When you conduct a search for a product, service or brand, notice that on the right hand side of the search results you can see the most recent activity of that brand. This gives searchers a chance to see recent blog posts and other activity at a glance which will increase click-through rates.

* YouTube – Now that YouTube is part of Google, anything you do on YouTube now shows up better in Google search results. Your Google+ profile picture shows up next to your YouTube profile, plus you can auto post YouTube videos to Google+ updates.

Using all the different features of Google+ offers huge advantages to any online marketer who wants to take the time to learn about the features mentioned above. Google is constantly rolling out even more features which promise to benefit online and offline business owners even more. There are ways to improve page rank and search results using Google+ that are spelled out in Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Because Google is the top search engine, owning over 60 percent of market share, it’s important not to ignore the importance of the features Google puts out. Using Google+ and all its features will benefit you much more than using similar features outside of the Google+ platform.

That doesn’t mean you should stop using other social media, but it does mean that much of your effort should stay with Google. Recognizing the importance of Google+ and all the tools available for your business will ensure that you are using all the features that can enhance your online marketing efforts.