"They have made a conscious decision to compromise search quality to push users to Google+"
It's my understanding that search results are unchanged - is this wrong? I thought the social box on the side was just something that came up in addition to the natural search results.
Incorrect. I did a search for "test" while logged out. In the top 5 results there are 2 results for MG Seigler who I am not connected with in any way.
Then I did another search for NFC Championship game - Again, MG Siegler #5 in the results. Apparently he made a comment that he was going to the game. So this guy who is not associated with football in any way who wrote a 10 word fragment on his wall showed up above the following results...
Hm, that's not really what I mean. That's just providing additional information in the result. That additional info favors Google+, sure, but it's still not a rearrangement of the primary natural search results.
As a branch of the main Macy's result, yeah. It isn't a natural result itself. If your goal is to browse simply natural results you just look at the primary results. Those do not appear to be different.
It's my understanding that search results are unchanged - is this wrong? I thought the social box on the side was just something that came up in addition to the natural search results.