For the time being, I am not happy with this past weeks change in Google Land.
Google is transitioning all Google Places Pages into Google Plus Business Pages. If you have a Google Places Page, and you should, it’s probably already happened to you.
This is apparently the first step in a series of steps Google will be rolling out in coming months. It may well turn out all right, but in the interim at least I have some issues.
For one, under Google Pages you had up to five categories you could appear in. The Google Plus Business Pages list two.
The videos we created for clients or provided by clients are not showing up on the Google Plus Business Pages either.
I am told, but cannot confirm, that the presence of Videos, Pictures and Citations will still matter, but I have some doubts.
One thing that will matter in the future will be backlinks just like normal web pages, as Google Plus Business Pages will be indexed. But what will really matter is the extent to which a business is able to get there customers to Plus 1 them.
In the new bold social media world Google envisions, the results you will get when you do a search for a toaster or restaurant will be determined by what your circle of friends has Google Plus’d in the past.
In their way of seeing things, this is what would happen if you were at a party or function and asked your friends for a recommendation. Makes some sense, but I harbor some doubts about the long term results of this.
In the near term there is a certain amount of consternation as we all come to grips with the changes and then work to figure out how to make the changes work to our advantage.
One thing is clear. Google Plus will matter. You want to have a Google Plus page, even if you did not have a Google Places Page. There are a lot of features to Google Plus that will become more valuable and useful as more and more people discover that they need to be on Google Plus. The Hangouts for example have a lot of potential. But frankly, I have ignored them so far.
They are working there way to the top of my to do list.
I expect to be writing multiple posts on Google Plus in the coming weeks. I will share the information I discover as I get it and make sense of it.
The speed of change continues to rock the internet marketing world. I will do my best to stay on top of these changes and help make sense of them for you and your business.