New York Times published a report on Google+ on last Friday - that highlighted that Starbucks and The Economist use Google+ in order impact their search efforts rather than just for being socially active and visible. According to Alex Wheeler, the vice president of global digital marketing Starbucks, while posting something on Google+, they think more about how would the post relate to search efforts.
Starbucks has around three million Google+ followers; while its Facebook page has got 36 million 'likes'. Starbucks often updates its Google+ page in order to achieve good search placement and follows Google's advice on how optimising the Google+ content for the search engine.
The Economist’s senior director of audience - Chandra Magee admitted to take the advantage of Google+ features such as Hangouts. She also highlights the benefit of Google+ to improve the brand’s SEO efforts.
The Economist believes in the fact that Google+ has the potential to help us get in front of new audiences, as well as to help us with the SEO strategy. Thus, their posts on Google+ are actually showing up our search engine results.
The New York Times has reported that Google offers brands incentives to sign up on its social media network, giving companies with Google+ profiles, “Prime placement on the right-hand side of the search results, with photos and promotional posts.”
The New York Times says that nearly half of the 540 million monthly active users who are there on Google+ do not visit the social network often. When asked about Google+ integrations and the the push-back that Google received after it began to demand YouTube comments be made via Google+, Horowitz said, “We are attuned both to what people say and do.”
