What is Google + and How you can use it to increase your Business Visibility
What is Google +
Google
+ is Google’s social networking website. Within a year of its launching,
Google+ had 400 million registered user from all over the world. It is
important to understand why Google introduced Google Plus. You will note that
Google does not sell advertising on Google Plus; it was not set up with the
intention of becoming a major revenue driver for Google ie Google does not see
the role of Google Plus to be to generate a large user base to which
advertising can be sold in the same way that Facebook views its user base for
example. Rather, Google is reacting to the uncomfortable reality that their
primary quality indicator ie links are becoming increasingly redundant. For
example, if someone enjoys their experience at a restaurant, it is far more
intuitive and so likely that that user will like the Facebook page of that
business as opposed to link to that business’s website. In fact, the vast
majority of Web users could not, even if they wanted to, link to another
website.
The vast majority of Web users could like a business’s Facebook page or even their website (assuming the like plug-in is installed). So, Google’s job is and has been to harness the collective intelligence of Web users to identify what is good content and what is not. To date, this intelligence has manifested itself in links. However, in an increasingly “social world,” social indicators are likely to be far more relevant indicators of quality. So, why doesn’t Google just use the social indicators from third parties such as Facebook likes for example? Because Google does not own this data and to rely on it in order to rank websites would be to cede an immense amount of power to the third parties. If Google came to rely heavily on such third party generated data, then it would find itself in a very vulnerable commercial situation should the owner of the data wish to either cut off access to the data or charge exorbitant fees for access. This is best articulated by Amit Singhal, head of search at Google, when he says that algorithm updates that rely on data from third parties is not something that Google is comfortable with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVzM4n1I-vM .
Faced with this dilemma, Google generated its own social network in the hope that users would migrate to it and so provide Google with its own source of quality indicators to augment / replace links. This is the driving force behind the Google +1 concept. If Google can convince people to use Google Plus and +1 content that they like (far more intuitive than linking to it), it can use this data to understand what content online is high quality. Further, it can customise search results for users based on who they are connected to in their Google Plus network thereby again increasing the relevance / quality of their search product.
The vast majority of Web users could like a business’s Facebook page or even their website (assuming the like plug-in is installed). So, Google’s job is and has been to harness the collective intelligence of Web users to identify what is good content and what is not. To date, this intelligence has manifested itself in links. However, in an increasingly “social world,” social indicators are likely to be far more relevant indicators of quality. So, why doesn’t Google just use the social indicators from third parties such as Facebook likes for example? Because Google does not own this data and to rely on it in order to rank websites would be to cede an immense amount of power to the third parties. If Google came to rely heavily on such third party generated data, then it would find itself in a very vulnerable commercial situation should the owner of the data wish to either cut off access to the data or charge exorbitant fees for access. This is best articulated by Amit Singhal, head of search at Google, when he says that algorithm updates that rely on data from third parties is not something that Google is comfortable with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVzM4n1I-vM .
Faced with this dilemma, Google generated its own social network in the hope that users would migrate to it and so provide Google with its own source of quality indicators to augment / replace links. This is the driving force behind the Google +1 concept. If Google can convince people to use Google Plus and +1 content that they like (far more intuitive than linking to it), it can use this data to understand what content online is high quality. Further, it can customise search results for users based on who they are connected to in their Google Plus network thereby again increasing the relevance / quality of their search product.
Before
reading any further, you must take the time to fully understand Google+ by
signing into a Google + account and selecting “help.” Here you will find
comprehensive documentation on Google + and its functionality. Below is
synopsis of the comprehensive documentation.
The Tour:
A
Google + profile is like a Facebook personal account in that it is for a
private individual. For more, see: http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1355890&topic=1257354&ctx=topic
Much of the functionality that we are used to from Facebook is here. Profile
owners can add people and pages to their “circles.” By doing this, updates from
these people and pages flow into your news feed as happens in Facebook.
Home:
The
layout of the Google Plus interface is quite similar to that of Facebook. On
logging in, pride of place in the centre of the screen is your news feed as
marked below in green. This is the feed of updates from all of your friends as
well as the people and companies you follow. As with Facebook via the friends
list functionality, your feed can be segmented into streams depending on from
whom you want to see updates. As in the red box below, your news feed can be
segmented depending on the circles you have set up, more on circles below.
Circles:
Circles
are accessible from the “more” tab on the left hand side of the screen. These
are to Google + what Friends Lists are to Facebook in that they facilitate the
user to group friends and pages into logical clusters such as friends,
business, entertainment etc. By creating circles and adding people to these,
you can then filter your news-feed to contain only updates from people in a
particular circle. Further, when posting updates, you can choose with which
circles you wish to share the updates.
From a
business's perspective, the goal is to get as many people as possible to add
your business page to one of their circles as then your updates will appear in
their newsfeed. While business pages can add other business pages to circles, a
business page can only add a private individual to a circle if that individual
has added them first.
Profile:
Here is
where your profile on Google Plus can be edited. This is how others see you on
Google Plus. You can see all of those sites from around the net that you have
+1’d ie your favourite stuff from around the net.
Explore:
As the
name suggests, this is where Google Plus users can explore what’s happening on
Google Plus to find interesting people and pages to follow. When you click on
“get started” you will be presented with the screen below which is essentially
groups of categorised people and pages. You can choose to circle individual
people and pages from a category or to follow the whole category. If you follow
the whole category, this will automatically create a circle of that category’s
name and add all people in the category to that circle.
Hangouts:
Hangouts is a group voice and video conferencing feature. The
ubiquity of Skype does tend to mean that the problem that this hopes to solve
has already been solved.
Photos:
A useful feature within the photos section is the ability to
link your Google Plus account to your Picasa account.
Google + For Business:
A
Google+ page is the equivalent on Google+ as a business page on Facebook. Like
Facebook, there are different types of business page. These are:
●
Product or Brand
●
Company, Institution or Organization
●
Local business or Place
●
Arts, Entertainment or Sports
●
Other
Most
businesses will want a company, institution or organisation page. Businesses
that have physical premises will want a Google + Local page for each premises
that they have. Google + Local pages essentially replace old Google Places
pages. It is not compulsory to move to Google + Local.
The
reason that a business would consider moving to Google+ Local is to avail of
additional functionality that is not available within Google Places. For example,
businesses that upgrade to Google + will be able to post regularly at their
Google + Local page and users of Google+ will be able to add such pages to
their circles. Posting to your business page as well as to a number of local
pages may place an undue administrative burden on a company particularly in
light of the relatively low levels of users on Google+. To create a Google Plus
page, follow the steps here: https://plus.google.com/pages/create (you will
need to set up a gmail account).
Link your page to your
website:
Link your website to your
page with a Google+ badge:
Growing a follower base:
Google+
is no different to any other social networking site in that it offers companies
the ability to create business pages to which users can subscribe by adding the
page to a circle. Interestingly and in my opinion impressively, a company
cannot add an individual to a circle unless that person has firstly added them
ie the power lies with the individual and the silly situation that is rampant
on Twitter whereby companies follow everyone, left right and centre in the hope
of getting a follow back does not arise. Company pages must create compelling
content in order to convince people to add them to a circle. Companies can add
other companies to a circle without permission though.
Increase Exposure in
search results:
By
adding the +1 button to your website, you are offering visitors to the site the
opportunity to +1 any page on the site which essentially means “I think this
page is pretty cool!” Our internal research indicates that the more +1s a page
has, the higher it ranks in search results even for searches carried out by
people not logged into a Google account. For those logged into a Google
account, those pages that have been +1’ed by people within their social
connections will rank higher and have an annotation that x person and y others
+1’ed this.
By social connection, we mean anyone who you have added to a circle on Google Plus, people in your GMail or Google Talk chatlist or even those people who you are following in Google Reader and/or Buzz. The rationale here is logical and it is that you are more likely to be interested in content that has been +1’d by someone you know than content that has not been. So, the more people that a business can get to +1 its content the greater the chance that this content will receive a rankings boost.
By social connection, we mean anyone who you have added to a circle on Google Plus, people in your GMail or Google Talk chatlist or even those people who you are following in Google Reader and/or Buzz. The rationale here is logical and it is that you are more likely to be interested in content that has been +1’d by someone you know than content that has not been. So, the more people that a business can get to +1 its content the greater the chance that this content will receive a rankings boost.
Comments
Post a Comment