The Google plus pub test
I continually see articles hyping Google+ and if you follow me on twitter you’ll hopefully know 2 things:
1) I actually like Google+ as a network, it looks good, it has some neat features like hangouts
2) other than reserving a presence and setting up authorship I don’t think it’s worth spending much time on, yet
I’m not going to rehash my points on misleading posts/statements that claim g+ is the 2nd largest network, in summary: usage is not the same as active users. If an expert doesn’t understand that they are very different, walk away.
That said there are a few things that I’ve been thinking about recently.
1) SEO benefits: At best guess it’s likely to help having links from g+ as they do pass page rank unlike other networks like twitter or Facebook. See this great Moz blog post, causation isn’t proven conclusively above the fact G+ creates links to your site.
2) Try the pub test: Go to a bar and ask anyone (non marketing/social media types) who’s used g+ more than twice this week to put their hand up – buy all of those people a drink – how much did it cost you?
UPDATE: With Google plus now being in use on YouTube, we’ll get another round of these “G+ is here” type headlines, there really will be no way of knowing the difference between YouTube use of G+ and actual G+ posts… especially when you have to uncheck the “share this on G+ too” box each time.
Log in to G+ who’s actually posting anything in there? It still won’t pass the pub test.
Hey Luke, what I like about Google Plus is the fact that it is used more in “expert” and “niche” fields and generates more discussion for specific topics. Unlike Facebook, which is kind of “like the pub” when it comes to conversations, my Google Plus followers are all guys who work in a similar field to me – SEO and search engine optimisation. Discussions on there tend to have a more specialist (almost academic) level. So that’s what I value it for… create circles and connections for business and interests.
From an SEO perspective, like you said, I’ve seen websites that I own seeing ranking improvements when they have a lot of Google Plus engagement.