Google targets mobile Web publishers with content recommendation tool built on Google+ activity

The Google+ offensive continues today, with the announcement from Google that it’s pulling together parts of its omnipresent search engine with its social network to introduce a new feature that suggests other articles to mobile Web visitors.

The feature’s launch is seemingly restricted to Forbes for now, but it’s safe to assume more will be announced in the coming days and weeks.

From today, visitors to Forbes’ mobile website (on iOS or Android) will be ‘recommended’ other Forbes’ articles based on Search Authorship, signals and other articles with significant Google+ activity, such as +1s and shares.

All recommendations are context-specific, and will vary depending on the page currently being viewed. It’s worth noting, they aren’t pop-ups, so to speak, they only appear when a users ‘taps’ the little button at the bottom to read more.

Recommendations can appear whether a visitor is signed in to their Google Account or not, but if they are signed in they will also see pieces that have been +1d or shared by people in their circles.

Google also says it’s looking to make it easy for developers to add and configure these content recommendations for mobile sites, through a single line of Javascript.

We’re starting to see a flurry of Google+ related activity ahead of Google I/O this week. Earlier this year, Google announced Google+ Sign-In, essentially taking on Facebook Connect. Following on from this, Google announced it was “bringing app activities to Google Search” through Google+ Sign-In. Essentially, this means that if you search for a site or app on Google (assuming it has Google+ Sign-In integration), you’ll see popular and aggregate user activity within the search results page. Tying in with this, SoundCloud introduced Google+ Sign-In today.

“We’ve got lots more planned for Google+ content recommendations, and Google+ Sign-In more generally, so we’re looking forward to having over 50 companies who have integrated Google+ Sign In share their stories this week from Google I/O,” says Mario Anima, Product Manager, Google+.

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