The three-month-old Google+ has launched another volley at its chief rival, Facebook, with its new Google+ Pages.
Google+ Pages are the approximate equivalent of Facebook’s fan pages, which have become central to the strategies of brands from Starbucks to L’Oreal to Pampers over the past several years. Marketers have spent heavily both to create pages on Facebook, and in their unending quest for “fans” that declare their allegiance to the brand.
Google’s Pages will be open to a much wider array of businesses, organizations and brands than on Facebook. Anyone will be able to create a page for anything. Google will also make it tougher for operators of those pages – be they brands, organizations, sports teams or clubs – to add their equivalent of a fan to what Google calls “Circles.” And Google+ users will have to opt in to a page to receive any sort of communication from the brand.
“Pages are for anything, whereas profiles are for people,” Google vice-president Bradley Horowitz said. “None of these pages can interact with you unless you invite them into your life.”
Google’s +1 button will not automatically subscribe anyone to a brand page. Rather, Google is introducing a new button that brands or publishers can use to allow visitors to join a circle in one click.
In addition, Google is introducing a new search command that will act as a shortcut to joining a circle, in hopes of making the action as natural as a search query. If users type “+pepsi” into the search box, that command can automatically subscribe them to PepsiCo’s Google+ page.
The first time a user tries a “+” search, Google will ask if they want to subscribe directly this way. “It’s a setting users can change at any time,” Mr. Horowitz said.
Unlike Facebook, Google won’t attempt to derive any direct ad revenue from Pages, though they will be tightly integrated into search, Google’s ad products and analytics. There will be no direct way to “buy” new fans through advertising, other than, say, a search or display ad outside of Google+. Google expects that having businesses in Google+ will enhance its other businesses, such as search and mobile advertising.
In addition to big brands it hopes to attract, Google wants small businesses that may or may not have websites to use its G+ “Pages” as their default presences. While Google isn’t announcing it today, pages will soon be location-aware, allowing local businesses to send offers and deals to mobile phones.
There’s more. To read the full article in Advertising Age, click here.
