Business Images Showing up in Organic Search

As we reported last month, Matt Cutts released a video confirming that Google has been focused on determining which sites can be considered top authorities within their niche. Google is using all of the quality signals they have on hand, including things like Google+ interaction and rel="author" and rel="publisher" attributes to help guide them. We can see these industry leaders already standing out from the crowd with testing that includes images now showing up within the search results.

SiegeMedia came across several tests that included the use of images pulled from G+ within the search results. The first instance was a search for flights bringing up Travelstart in the listings with an image pulled from their G+ page. Travelstart has a confirmed G+ page but NO author tags in place on their site.

The second search was for car insurance, bringing up Progressive insurance. Progressive is obviously a well-known brand with a verified G+ page AND publisher tags in place on their site.

The third search for flight school pulled up a listing from a not-so-well-known brand PEA. PEA also has a G+ and they utilize the publisher markup on their site.

The takeaway from this report is two-fold, don't neglect your G+ presence and keep