Google Plus Pages Arrive

Social networking circles have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of brand pages for Google Plus, and now the wait is over. The new pages compliment personal profiles in the giant search engine’s new attempt to gain numbers and traction in the world of social networking. Although it may be early to judge, world dominatin appears to be mostly on track for the seven letter word that has now become a noun, a verb and an adverb. (How many brands can claim that?)

The new pages are attached to personal profiles much like they are in Facebook, but there is one feature that differentiates them which is getting a lot of comment—Direct Connect. Direct Connect allows anyone to search for a G+ page by simply placing a + sign in front of the brand name. So to find Pepsi, search “+pepsi” or +musicrow.

To create a Google plus Page log into your personal account and look in the bottom right hand corner where a prompt says, “Create A Google+ Page.” You must have a personal G+ account from which to create a Page.

Wired magazine’s webmonkey blog, written by Scott Gilbertson notes a few shortcomings in the new Pages system.

Among the list of things Google Plus Pages can’t do are basic Plus features like giving webpages a +1 or receiving notifications when others interact with your page. More limiting for larger brands, in their current form Google Plus Pages are tied directly to one (and only one) “normal” Google+ profile. That is, whomever sets up a company’s Page is the only person that can ever post to the Page. In order to actually be useful for most brands Google Plus Pages need options for administrators and a way for multiple contributors to post. Google seems aware of these shortcomings and, as is typical of the company’s launch-early, update-often approach, is promising users that “many more features [are] planned for the coming weeks and months.” For now most businesses appear to be on a land grab — staking a claim on Google Plus before anyone else can.

 

Indeed, yesterday at this publication we lunged qucikly to “grab” our company page, “MusicRow.” So please add us to your circles….