Google News Becoming Google News Plus?

Yesterday on the Google News blog, product manager Scott Zuccarino announced a new feature for those who keep up with their news through Google: Realtime Coverage pages that include results from Google+. Right now, this option is only available for people who have signed up for Google+ and are checking out the U.S. edition of Google News, but here's a sample screenshot of what a Realtime Coverage page looks like.

Of course, if you hate this feature you can modify your Google News settings to turn it off or simply sign out of Google altogether, but it does look like the search giant is continually looking for more ways to push the Google+ platform. (That's not really a shocker, though, is it?)

If your brand has a Google+ presence, will this new feature help improve your overall Google Search visibility? In a recent experiment conducted by Tasty Placement, the web design and SEO company found that even having a Google+ brand page with a fairly modest number of followers substantially improved Google ranking for a website. While this was an isolated experiment and the results shouldn't be considered scientific, the findings are still very interesting and well worth noting.

What are your thoughts? If you don't have a Google+ brand page yet, are you holding back due to lack of time or some other reason? Has this latest integration with Google News pushed you to rethink your position on G+?