Google is really wielding its power with how it handles user data on its fledgling social network, Google+. Reports are that in keeping with the new authorship mark-up protocol, Google+ users will soon have their Circles findable in Google search.

There are two things to deal with here, so let’s briefly look at number one. You might have noticed that when you ‘google’ a particular item of news (particularly tech news) a little picture appears next to some of the search results. That is authorship mark-up in action, and is Google’s way of ascribing bits of online content to its source—in this case an author. Google has been speaking highly of this new feature, boasting that it will give people the incentive to brand their content in a certain way and thus create more quality search results.

Feeding into authorship mark-up is the second element that must be considered. Google+ is rooted firmly in the concept of ‘Circles’ and it is through this system that Google plans to give prominence to those who appear in the search results under authorship mark-up.

According to some sources, the next step is to display the number of people someone has in their Circles. This by itself is not a bad thing, but one can hardly see the regular Joe then getting a spot with their picture in the search results. People like Robert Scoble like to chat and have lots of friends in the tech industry so he’ll naturally have his little photo displayed. What about the rest of us?

Do you think Google is planning to feature only prominent people in its search results under authorship mark-up? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

You can also see how authorship mark-up works by watching the video below:

(Source: sitetrail.com)

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