Within 16 days of launching, Google+ gained an astounding 10 million users (a feat that took Facebook 852 days to accomplish). As blogged on “Drew’s Marketing Minute,” many business owners may not realize what a powerful business marketing tool Google+ is. I agree with Drew’s three main reasons for businesses to embrace Google+: personalized search results, easy searching for social networking profiles, and the display of relevant Google+ business pages with every search. These features helped Google gain a relative advantage over other search engines, particularly Bing by Microsoft, and quickly increased the adoption rate of this new innovation.
To elaborate on Drew’s three main points, I researched further into the new search engine features and discovered some other potential advantages for business users. The personalized search draws from the user’s Google+ profile and photos to generate the most relevant search results possible. This could help firms find their major competition in terms of similar market offerings or substitute goods. If users find the search results irrelevant, they can easily switch between the “global” and the “personal” view with the click of a button. Companies could experiment to see what a typical consumer’s search engine results are when they type in certain keywords that are relevant to the company.
Another plus for business professionals and students is the easy profile search for people that we know or have just met. Ever had the experience where you meet John Smith at a networking event, but you can’t differentiate between the one that you met from the hundreds of others on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook? Google+ can draw information from the user’s profile and the their friends’ to find the right person.
In addition, businesses can edit their profile content to enhance their online presence and professional network. When someone conducts an online search for the company or employee, Google will draws from all aspects of the World Wide Web to find the most important content and display it in the summarized search result. There will also be a link provided to the Google+ profile. Other social networking profiles can be added to the search result by the user. The benefits are that Google can increase the likelihood of the company appearing first or higher up in search results, at no cost to the company. However, Google+ users will need to monitor their online presence more closely and try to minimize or eliminate any negative online content that is related to them. Business users can be reassured knowing that the service is free and can be ended at any time. The account and the social search can be deactivated and eliminated entirely from the search settings.
As Drew says, “you simply cannot ignore Google+.” Google+ is not just another social networking site (with the added feature of group video calling). Potential business users worried about the time-consuming task of maintaining yet another social networking site will realize that the benefits outweigh the opportunity costs.