Online sellers are being urged to take advantage of Google+, with many experts predicting it will soon become impossible for businesses to ignore the social media site.
Until recently, many predicted the search engine’s social media offering was a flop, and would do little to stem the growing popularity of Facebook.
However, online marketing experts are now saying the digital giant has adopted its “most aggressive stance ever” in promoting its reinvigorated version of Google+ – ‘Search Plus Your World’ (SPYW).
This new offering, already used by 100 million people, appears to cause Google+ profiles to appear at the top of search results, and also improves the page rank of other pages connected to them.
This is highly relevant for ecommerce companies, as typically consumers will click on links nearest the top of search results.
In a further ‘aggressive’ act by Google, it has created a prominent separate sidebar for Google+ results, leading to some accusations that it isn’t offering the most relevant results.
SPYW will soon be impossible to ignore and businesses should embark on Google+ marketing strategies immediately, the experts believe.
Rand Fishkin, CEO and founder of the digital marketing site SEOMoz, thinks SPYW will become a necessity for many businesses.
“If Google stays as aggressive as it’s been in the last 10 days with pushing Google+ for even logged-out users, the service will become a necessity for search and social marketers,” he says.
“While I’m no particular fan of using your market power to force users onto a platform they may not want, I’m also a realist.”
Danny Sullivan, of digital marketing site Search Engine Land, wrote earlier this year that “Google’s search results were undergoing their most radical transformation ever” with the launch of SPYW.
“It finds both content that’s been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings,” wrote Sullivan.
Meanwhile SEO expert and blogger David Naylor says there are already signs that the new approach is being rolled out in the UK .
