Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google has finally embarked the social media journey with full promise and poise.

Google now has access to its own data related to social signals and Google is very much focused on search and according to me the Google+ initiative is mainly aimed at enhancing the quality of search results which is very much affected due to the mal practices because of link building and content spamming.

As my main focus is on search as an SEO I think , it is imperative to be active on Google+ from the web presence perspective due to the following reasons:

· Google+ social signals are going to affect the search results in Google undoubtedly

· Google is also experimenting with business profiles

· These business profiles have a full possibility of being integrated with Google Places affecting local search. http://searchengineland.com/google-pages-coming-for-businesses-83985

· Google+ has the feature of circles by which categorization becomes easy and simple due to which you can manage the personal family and friends circle along with the professional and business circle via the same platform and social media profile.

· Google has introduced the rel author tag and Google clearly mentions on http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1229920 that you need to add the link to your author page in the list of links on your Google Profile so the co-relation with the rel attribute and the profile of the author can be set and verified.

· Google Plus is already mobile

· Visits to your site from Google+ can be viewed in Google Analytics Reports . You can go to any tab, any report in Google Analytics and see Google+ traffic side by side with your regular traffic, just by selecting the Google+ traffic segment

· Google clearly has mentioned that ,”Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.” Hence once the Real Time Search option is active again on the search page the Google+ posts will be listed on it.

In short having a Google+ profile and using it actively will add a plus to the organic SERPs, local search, blogger profile via the rel author tag, real time search option and you will be able to track and measure the Google+ data via Google Analytics.

Though I agree this gives more power to Google to monopolize the search platform but according to me Google very much deserves it and this is one monopoly which may have the maximum market share but keeps on working hard on innovation and keeps competing with its previous results at the same time offers value to the user in the form of information and knowledge in many ways at no extra cost.

1. What more can a user ask for?

2. Do you think your Google+ profile can be neglected as a social media platform or from the search and overall web presence perspective ?

3. Is there any other point you would like to add in the above mentioned list of reasons for having a Google+ Profile?

Author : Bharati Ahuja
Image by Ruth Tsang via Flickr

I just read an article on the following link:

http://blog.socialwavelength.com/2011/07/it-takes-a-lot-more-than-the-initial-hoopla-my-thoughts-on-google/

and started writing my views as a comment but it went on to be so long that I decided to publish it as a blog post instead.

My thoughts on the article mentioned above:

I think Google is synonymous to search and FB is synonymous to social media but with the integration of social signals and search Google realizes the need to have access to some reliable social data that they can trust and also integrate easily in their search algorithms.

Google had access to Twitter data from October 2009 onwards and Google had announced the Real Time Search option but now in June 2011 that option has been deactivated as their deal with Twitter has expired. And at the very same time Google announced Google+ because they want to continue with their integrated results of search and social.

Google is very much focused on search and according to me the Google+ initiative is mainly aimed at enhancing the quality of search results which is very much affected due to the mal practices because of link building and content spamming.

As mentioned on http://searchengineland.com/as-deal-with-twitter-expires-google-realtime-search-goes-offline-84175

Google clearly has mentioned that ,”Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.” So if businesses want to be found on the real time search of Google having a presence on Google+ is a logical thing to do.

But that does not mean that they need not have a presence on FB as more than making a choice of being on FB or G+ it is more about how I can widen my out reach further by reaching out to my niche targeted audience via search and social media.

FB originated with a vision and mission of social out reach and connections Google started off with a focus on search which now is referred to as library search as social media has given birth to real time search so for Google it seems the most logical next step to take.

But as social media and SEO companies our objective is to help businesses have a maximum out reach on the web i.e on the search engines and also on sites where the netizens are spending more and more time.

Eventually as the most important aspect is the target audience, depending on your product, service or purpose of online promotion one will have to select the platform and as the title of the post says it is much beyond the initial hoopla, its true only time will tell whether Google is able to succeed in its third time initiative of social media after Orkut and Wave. So far it seems very promising as the Circles aspect of G+ does give you an easy choice to make regarding what you want to share with whom.

Moreover, Google is also experimenting with business profiles on Google+ which they might integrate further with Google Places which is another inviting feature for businesses to have a presence of Google+.

When Google had its humble beginning as a search engine nobody had thought that they would out do Yahoo or Altavista but due to their technical expertise and focus they have been able to achieve a monopoly for search. Only the future will say whether FB will be able to forge ahead as it is being doing for all this time as now they have true competition else there is full possibility that they can meet the same fate as Yahoo if their focus gets shifted.

Otherwise I think FB and Google+ can both exist together serving different purposes and niche targeted audiences.

There is a great insight on what happened to Yahoo when their focus shifted from their identity as a technology company to a media company on the following link:

http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

A related article on our blog http://www.webpro.in/does-your-company-has-the-vision-mission-and-value-statements-spelt-loud-and-clear