Hashtag Search at Google?

If you didn't think Google+ was important to your digital marketing initiatives, you better think again.

Users in the U.S. and Canada that are searching on Google for a hashtag will now see a relevant set of Google+ posts on the right of regular search results (see image below). Only those posts that have been shared publicly or shared with individual users (assuming they are logged in) will be displayed. Google's Zaheed Sabur posted about the new feature at, where else, Google+.

Clicking on those items/posts appearing will direct the user to Google+. Another thing that is interesting about the Google Plus update is that the search engine isn't limiting users to searching hashtags on its social network alone. Searching for content with a hashtag query also returns results from Facebook and Twitter.