Want to enhance your presence in the search engines? Establishing a Google+ Business Page, and creating your own personal Google+ account, has become a necessity.

In early November, Google launched Google+ Pages, which effectively allowed businesses to participate in the ever-evolving Google+ social network. Now Google is placing an even higher emphasis on social search with the introduction of “Google Search, plus Your World” just last month.

Here’s an example of the impact that social search and Google+ Pages have on search engine results: When a search query is conducted for the term “SEO,” Google+ personal profiles and business pages are displayed along the right margin of the results.

You can see that Google automatically pulled a personal profile, as well as a Google+ Page for SEOMoz, one of the most popular SEO-related communities on the net.

While the exact criteria are not readily available on what influences a personal or business page’s appearance for search queries, having a completely built-out page gives businesses another platform for connecting with their target audiences. In addition, for a company that is underperforming in organic search results, having a healthy Google+ Page with visibility presents an opportunity to increase brand awareness through more followers and even help boost web traffic.

Next month, we’ll focus on the value of Google+ personal profiles, and how they can be optimized to appear in the search engine results.

You can connect with Fish Marketing on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/101243503831829274020/posts.