
Official Release of Google+ Pages - xpressyoo
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-pages-connect-with-all-things.html
======
celticjames
> you can build relationships with all the things you care about - from local
> businesses to global brands

Do people in marketing even hear themselves? I'm going to be charitable and
assume this is ad copy aimed at other marketers because no real human has ever
wished they could build a relationship with a global brand. Now if you excuse
me, I need to go like the Guinness page on facebook.

~~~
gcl2
Honestly, this myopic view of the ad world is why there is such a disconnect
between our industry and the ad industry.

While the normal computer engineer/entrepreneur is far too 'sophisticated' to
have a personal connection with a brand, there are 'real-world' people that do
have connections. It's not the cheap "let me play this memory game on their FB
page" connection, but a deeper connection.

There are people who feel for brands like Khan Academy and what they're doing
for education, there are couples who have a soft spot for their local
restaurant where the guy proposed to the girl, there are even families that
fondly remember their first beat-up Honda that was reliable through thick and
thin.

Sure, we may not have these deep connections given our fast paced lives, but
please realize that there are others who do have human feelings for non-human
entities that have made their lives better.

~~~
gravitronic
Very funny that you suggest computing enthusiasts are not subject to personal
connections with brands. The phrase "fan boy" was essentially created within
the technology domain.

~~~
sjs
I thought it started in comics.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_(person)#Fanboy.2Ffangirl>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanboy_(comics)>

------
zach
So _this_ is what the + is for now. Go ahead, enter [+pepsi] in the Google
Chrome omnibox.

This looks like the first time Google's fundamental search syntax has been
changed to support a new product. Right? Wow.

So I guess now we know how meaningful the "plus" is. It at first seemed like a
generic advertising term, like "Google Deluxe". Then when we started using G+,
it seemed like it was just their riff on the @ syntax. Now we know it goes all
the way to the input box on www.google.com, the very center of the Google user
experience.

Now, queries starting with a plus basically shunt you to Google+ instead of
web search. To the average Google user, it's like their country's phone
company created new phone numbers that start with #. Can they do that? They
just did.

The upshot is that Google has officially carved out part of the web search
query universe just for a namespace of its own. Remember this day.

~~~
andyking
Entering "+pepsi" into my copy of Chrome, or into the Google Search page
itself, just does a standard Google search for Pepsi. I'm in the UK. Is this
US-only functionality?

~~~
zach
I should clarify that it's not in quotes, my fault for not using bracket
syntax (now edited).

But for me here in California, [+pepsi] entered in either box takes me to
Pepsi's Google+ page — and crucially, _not_ to pepsi.com.

~~~
exit
i didn't use quotes and still get a regular search

~~~
benmccann
Worked for me with Chrome 15.0.874.106

------
m3koval
Now we know for sure why Google removed the "+" operator: it's used for the
"direct connect feature." E.g. if you search for +pepsi you're redirected to
Pepsi's Google+ page.

~~~
tmcw
It's like AOL keywords 2k11!

------
gojomo
In the NYTimes coverage ([http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/google-
lets-in-the-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/google-lets-in-the-
corporations/)), Horowitz says:

 _“Over time, I expect ‘+Pepsi’ to emerge on every can, on TV spots and on the
Web site and become a cult phenomenon…Over a couple of quarters, brands will
learn to utilize this.”_

I somewhat doubt that, unless Google offers big cross-promotional subsidies.
Which they might, but is sort of the antithesis of a 'cult phenomenon'.

I do find it interesting that Google, the infovore behemoth that killed
various 'reserved keyword' schemes (as at AOL and RealNames, and even to some
extent domain names) with flexible full-text-search is now reintroducing
reserved keywords with 'Direct Connect'.

------
jonpaul
Does anyone find it a bit ironic that these page URLs are NOT search engine
friendly? Just a long string id... seriously Google? Maybe not irony because
they own the search engine... but still makes you scratch your head wondering
why.

~~~
tomkarlo
In what respect are they not "search engine friendly"? Being human-readable or
slugged doesn't necessarily make URLs more search engine friendly, nor does it
necessarily improve their rank:

[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-u...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-
urls-vs-static-urls.html)

~~~
alinajaf
Whether or not they're more search engine friendly, if you're looking for
Japanese Astrophysics Vocabulary you're more likely to click `/japanese-
astrophysics-vocab.html` than `/p?id=47`

~~~
tomkarlo
That's true if you actually read and interpret the URL (I'd guess that most
users don't.) But regardless, I was commenting on the earlier complaint that
the URLs aren't "search engine friendly", not that they're not "user
friendly." That's all I was trying to address.

------
jen_h
Just went through the effort of registering a support account to create a page
to be greeted with, "Google Pages isn't ready for everyone." (It did take me a
good long while to find that tiny text at the bottom of the page.)

Meanwhile, the support account is now being added to a bunch of users' circles
automatically and recommended to thousands of others. _Fabulous._

Only comforted by the fact that I used a Support Account to test this, instead
of my real corporate account, thus angering the Google "Real Name" gods...so
in good news, maybe the profile will be automatically deleted anyway.

~~~
jen_h
Update: I went ahead and disabled Google Plus for my domain & users for now. I
look forward to using Google+ from an Apps account once there's a way to
exclude users' address books from the G+ suggestion engine (should be a check
box on signup, no?).

------
SkyMarshal
There's no way I'll be 'Liking' things on my G+ account.

I've ruined my FB account by _liking_ every damn thing on the Internet that
interested me, and since the FB Like button debuted I've accumulated over 1000
likes.

They now combine to fill my news feed with 99% noise, drowning out the posts
from my real friends. Since I don't spend every second of the day monitoring
my FB account, posts from real friends get pushed below the fold before the
next time I login, and I miss them.

To make matters worse, FB has apparently disabled the Unlike button from the
settings page that allows you to see all your likes in one dialog, which is
apparently the closest thing to a bulk unlike available (you still have to
click Unlike for each page, but at least they're all there in a convenient
list).

So the only way to unlike stuff is apparently to visit each page, scroll down
to the Unlike button in the bottom of the left menu, click it, then proceed to
do the same for the next 1000+ pages. Not. I'm just switching over G+ instead.

Even with G+ I've made the mistake of subscribing to a bunch of shared
circles, and there's an impedance mismatch between the topic of the circles,
and the Public posts of the people in them. Even if I subscribe to say, a
Python Developers circle, I still get people's public posts of pictures of
dinner last night, etc., that is just more noise.

At least G+ makes it easy to fix the problem via unsubscribing, but what they
could really use is the ability to add filters to circles based on hashtags.
So if someone in my Python circle makes a public post that doesn't have
#python, #pypy, #tornado, or some other python-related hastag that I've
specified in my Python circle filter, that post won't show up in my feed.

But after having learned the hard way twice, I can guarantee I at least won't
be adding more spammy businesses and whatnot to my G+ feed.

~~~
delackner
Just an idea, but wouldn't simply making a Facebook List of real people fix
this? I never actually visit facebook directly, I just have a link directly to
a list of people I actually want to communicate with. Better still, recently
if you are viewing a list, status updates default to being sent visible ONLY
to the members of the list.

~~~
zem
would require all his friends to opt into posting to the list, no?

~~~
delackner
The main issue he was describing: news feed overflow; is solved by the list.
I'm not so sure what the visibility is of people replying to things you said
that were marked visible only to the list. Probably just the list as well, no?

------
johnyzee
Google+ sucks so far, and the stuff they are adding does nothing to improve
it, just adds more cruft.

Lately I am seeing a big "What's hot on Google+" section on top of the feed,
showing antiquated Youtube memes from people I don't know. No way to remove
it.

They are obviously trying hard to appeal to the mainstream audience (Hang out
with Kermit and Ms. Piggy!). It seems weird for Google, unauthentic somehow.
Their core 'fans', if that word applies, are engineers - I wonder if they
wouldn't be better served seeding Google+ with the geek community and letting
that user base evangelize the service.

------
gorog
Well, Google real customers are advertisers. They sure need to welcome their
customers in their network.

~~~
dholowiski
That's right, and think about what that makes you, the consumer. Hint - you're
the thing being sold to Google's customers.

------
sudonim
Pepsi's google+ id is: 111883881632877146615

I can't imagine them putting that in a subway ad.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Isn't that the point of their new "+" term in Google Search? Now the company
can put "+Pepsi" in a subway ad. It operates under the same assumption of
Twitter's "@Pepsi", where they assume people know what service to go to. In
this case that service is Google.com.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Does that mean each "pages" name will be unique in the global namespace?
Currently with "real names" they aren't unique which is one down-side compared
to Twitter (although it has upsides as well).

~~~
kmort
From the Direct Connect help page:

> A page’s eligibility for Google+ Direct Connect is determined
> algorithmically, based on certain signals we use to help understand your
> page's relevancy and popularity. In addition to this analysis, we look for a
> link between your Google+ page and your website. To help Google associate
> this content, be sure to connect your Google+ page and your website using
> the Google+ badge, or by adding a snippet of code to your site, in addition
> to adding your website link to your page.

------
playhard
Dear Google, I'm not going to switch from Facebook to you if you copy what
Facebook does! Google plus should give us experience which Facebook does not
give. Google plus is just adding up missing features. Google, try to come up
with a killer social experience which we have never seen before. That is how
you get users stick to your social site. if you are again giving us the same
old shit, you are losing to Facebook.

~~~
RobAtticus
I don't know, I think the idea of Hangouts with the Google+ Pages is kind of
neat. Maybe it won't work for giant corps like Pepsi, but smaller companies
might find it an interesting way to engage fans? Maybe demo things? I don't
know, seems interesting.

------
tilt
You can have a sneakpeek at G+ Pages' creation by deleting the overlaying
elements with your inspection tools at

<https://plus.google.com/pages/create>

Looks promising, it integrates with Google Places

~~~
evolution
Can you tell what manipulations are needed exactly to make it work?

~~~
tilt
I think they just rolled it out for me, so I can't actually tell you which
were the interested DIVs. Anyway, just point your cursor on the overlays and
"inspect" them. Then delete the nodes.

------
saturdaysaint
It will be _very_ interesting to see how, say, a given restaurant's Google
Plus page appears in search results compared to its Yelp and/or Facebook
equivalents. If Google highlights the + page in search results with rich page
information (eg daily specials, updates, etc.), Yelp and Facebook have a
problem.

~~~
abuzzooz
Isn't this precisely the kind of thing that will trigger anti-competition
lawsuits?

~~~
savramescu
If Facebook or someone else is unhappy with this they can just make their own
search engine. I don't see an issue with Google promoting another Google
product on it's own search page.

------
lubujackson
It is as if Google is desperately trying to become old Yahoo.

~~~
badclient
How long do you give before G+ _officially_ dies? I give it another year,
tops.

I do think it's pretty much dead unofficially, credit to a mediocre product
and a suicidal(or non-existent) adoption strategy.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
I sincerely doubt the service will die in a "year, tops" with 40 million
users, as of the last numbers we've heard. Do you have any actual evidence or
data to back up your opinion, or are you merely spouting random personal bias?

~~~
badclient
I signed up for G+ when it launched. I haven't been on it in _months_. And yet
I am sure I am one of those 40M members cited by Google. That 40M figure is
garbage. 40M may have tried G+; but a very small percentage are hooked to it
or like it. G+ won't tell us what percentage that is but it's a pretty solid
bet when a company refuses to share engagement metrics, it is because they
don't look good.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Exactly: random personal bias. Just because you haven't been back there
doesn't mean anything about the rest of the user base. The same could be said
about anyone that's signed up for Facebook or Twitter and are part of their
600 and 100 million user statistics, respectively.

I'm as curious to see engagement metrics as much as the next guy, but I'm not
reading tea leaves to predict doom and destruction for not happening to
release those numbers just 6 weeks after the site came out of beta. You're
trying too hard.

~~~
badclient
I don't consider this as "reading tea leaves":

 _Despite the bullish talk about levels of engagement on Google Plus, I
continue to find it strange that Google won't tell us how many of the reported
40+ million users are active, daily users.

Frustrated at not getting a straight answer to that, I optimistically asked
Gundotra if he would at least give me the percentage of active daily users to
total. But he wouldn't be drawn into that question either.

So I asked: what kinds of things are people doing on Google Plus right now?
Vic Gundotra pointed to photo sharing.

"Since we went to field trial on June 28," he remarked, "we've had 3.4 billion
photos uploaded to Google Plus."_

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plus_engagement....](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plus_engagement.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29)

"I sincerely doubt the service will die in a "year, tops" with 40 million
users"

Naive much? That translates to _we have 40M rows in a database table, please
be impressed and don't ask us for engagement_.

------
erickhill
"Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen
long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face."
That seems almost too touchy-feely. The possibilities do make the mind wander,
however.

------
sherr
It's about time but surely quite a bit half-baked ...

Right now, there's no concept of having page "administrators", so the person
who creates the page is the only one who can post to it. Also, no transfer of
"ownership". Both these things are "coming soon" apparently but make the whole
experience a bit suboptimal right now.

------
bryogenic
Anyone else getting a new favicon? I was just getting used to the + one, now
its an orange g+ that does not look very nice.

<https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/faviconr.ico>

------
rmason
I followed the link to create a page and after logging in I got a message 'the
pages wasn't ready for everyone yet'. So I guess the marketers got ahead of
the implementers once again.

------
pbreit
Would have killed them to come up with a name other than "Pages"?

------
whackberry
Google wants to become the WWW itself. Is this good?

~~~
alexknight
People said the same thing about Facebook, but I very much doubt that's their
focus. Some seem to confuse mass user bases with somehow "becoming the
Internet itself." Frankly, that argument is bizarre to me and a tad
hyperbolic.

------
OoTheNigerian
How does this differ from a Google Plus page? I am trying hard but I cannot
see it.

~~~
ceejayoz
Google actively removes non-individual Google+ accounts.

I'd imagine in the future Google+ pages will be like Facebook pages - the
ability to add apps etc.

------
Antelope
Admittedly off-topic, but when is Google going to improve the design of their
internal blogs?

Yeah, I know that sort of thing isn't their focus, but this is just painful.
At first glance it looks like an unprofessional, unpolished website. If
nothing else, a bit more line-height and some strategically-placed padding!

~~~
mbreese
I don't have an example handy, but some of the internal blogs were testing out
a new set of templates for Blogger that were very slick looking.

~~~
donatzsky
And they don't work - at all - without JavaScript.

~~~
pferde
That's the Brave New Web.

Also, the company google pages linked to in the article only display here as
empty white page without js, even though html source shows a lot of html and
javascript. Or is it my adblock preemptively blocking entire company page? :)

------
yanw
Are brand pages necessary? I think I prefer G+ as a human only network, not
sure products fit into the circles analogy.

~~~
VikingCoder
Yes, they're necessary, so you can tell the difference.

Companies were already making G+ Profiles, even though it was against the
terms of use.

------
ivanzhao
Following is the signal of death.

