Google+ Prepares To Open Up Business Pages
Last week Google+ dropped its requirement that new users have received an invitation to the service. Now Google spokespeople are saying business pages will soon be available.
As of now only Ford and General Motors have had the test pages with the business page formatting. There are reports that many businesses have secured the names to their pages and are just waiting for the go ahead, while other businesses have had their names squatted upon. Sorting this out might be what is taking Google+ so long to open up to businesses. Whatever the reasons, Google+’s user base has grown tremendously over the few months it has been open. Three separate reports in early September place the user base at more than 20 million unique visitors, with Paul Allen’s model estimating 43 million users.
Speculation is that these pages will automatically be integrated with other Google products like Google Places and Google Offers. There are no announcements except for a “coming soon” so everything remains speculation. However, the speculation makes sense as a way for Google+ to distinguish itself from what FaceBook offers its brand users.
The digital agency will need to make sure clients are represented on the social network as soon as possible. It is quite possible those distinguishing features offered by Google+ may be able to immediately have an impact on customer traffic. Any delay in the Google+ representation might be lost sales. There will also be a rush to acquire names and how Google+ will acknowledge several businesses of the same name is not yet announced and maybe not even worked out. There is still no notice about advertising on Google+, so this is not yet the purview of the digital agency. It will probably not be far away and some of the integration with other Google products is a form of advertising, even if there is not an accompanying charge for clickthroughs.
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