Google+ rolling out granular control for “What’s Hot”, aiming for more relevant content

If you’ve been wanting a bit more granular control over the “what’s hot” section of your Google+ stream, there’s good news for you today. Googler Scott Zuccarino tells us that the what’s hot and content sliders are merging in order to give you better access to the content that you want to see:

“Whenever hot posts do appear in your stream, we’ll label them accordingly. And if you’re ever in the mood to only see hot posts, you can always click on “What’s hot” in the left-hand navigation menu.”

The hope, of course, is to make sure that only the topics which are most interesting to you end up in your stream, thereby nudging you into staying on the site just a bit longer. As Google has continued to improve the service, some people were saying that connections to so many friends meant that they weren’t seeing what was big news globally. The What’s Hot feature hopes to scratch this itch.

Zuccarino says that the feature will be rolling out to all Google+ users in the coming days, and once you have the option available to you, you can visit the What’s Hot page in order to take advantage of the customization.

It’s good to see Google responding to user requests on the service. After the recent introduction of official brand pages on Google+, users expressed concern over being inundated with marketing. Controls such as What’s Hot should help to alleviate issues of this sort.