Google made some pretty significant changes this week to integrate Google+ and search in a bigger way than ever before. Some are calling it Google’s most radical change to search ever. Google is calling it “Search Plus Your World”. There several significant changes that Google has made to search, but really only one that has strong implications for B2B companies. Because B2B is kind of our thing, that’s the change that we’ll focus on.

I speculated about the possibility of these changes back in November and while I didn’t predict everything, I was right about one thing. Google is beginning to capitalize on the popularity of Google+ by integrating it more fully into traditional search results. If you ever needed a reason to get your brand on Google+, this is it. Starting this week Google is rolling out “People and Pages” suggestions. Now, Google+ profiles and pages will begin appearing to the right of the traditional search results for anyone logged into G+. When Google decides that there is a Google+ page or profile that is relevant to a given search, they will promote it on the sidebar. So anyone without a Google+ page will forfeit any chance of appearing in those results and could suffer some lost sales because of it. Worse still is if your competitors are represented, but you are absent.

I’m going to keep this post short and sweet because it’s easy to overcomplicate these things. The way I see it, if your business has any sort of SEO program in place, now is the time to reach out to whoever is running it to figure out how your company should navigate these new waters because Google+ can no longer be ignored.