Pop-up in SERPs - "Introducing Search Plus Your World"

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Your photos, your friends, your stuff... This is a limited preview. Upgrade to Google+ to control your experience.

I am seeing the above when I visit Google, placed directly above search results with a small image of a person silhouette and a big blue "upgrade" button.

I know there is another thread about the service and what Google is doing but I want to focus on the popup/message and its effects on serp click through.

~ will it be used?
~ will it cause users to be turned off to the results?
~ More importantly will it negatively impact ctr for page one results, especially those in positions 2-5 which may now be below the fold more often?

[tedster]

It's bound to affect CTR to a degree, I'd say. However, the user does need to be logged in to get Google's pitch for Search Plus or to see the social mentions in the results.

You can get some idea about how big an effect that might be (as a maximum) by noticing the percentage of Google traffic where the keywords are not supplied. That should be all the visits who are logged in to a Google account. If none of your visitors turned off Search Plus, that would be the max number. And even then, not everyone who sees Search Plus results is going to have Google+ mentions for their search terms.

[nomis5]

Does anyone have any idea what the take-up is for Search+?

From my point of view in the UK, no-one knows what it is and haven't signed up for it. Is it different in the US?

I'm just beginning to suspect that Google is getting desparate as far as Google+ is concerned because the interest is so low.

[tedster]

From what I can tell, interest and even awareness is extremely low. However, Google's actions in trying to increase awareness and interest are still quite likely to affect SEO efforts, depending on the query terms.

This pop-up message is something many businesses might do on other websites to build awareness for some new offering. But at the top of the search results page, it seems quite possible it would have a noticeable impact, especially for consumer goods searches.