I am sitting here thinking about Google+ for business pages. The more I do, the more I think this is going to be used as a signal that will help clean up Google's search engine spam and make the internet a better place at the same time.
I just set up a few business pages and as I was inserting the code they give you for the head of your pages. I noticed it contains something similar to the rel=author code that they have been trying to push on everyone. Although it is not required to use the service I am sure that Google will use this as some sort of trust factor. They would be stupid if they didn't use it. They are tying Google+ accounts to the websites that have pages. It is too early to tell but I am sure that this could be used as a social signal in the near future.
I was doing some reading in their terms of service and although there will be multi-admin users set up it says that the page can never be transferred. This means that once you build a page it will be in your profile forever. No idea what happens if you sell the website that is associated with the page but this has to be changed unless Google sticks to its guns with this.
First question that comes to my mind is who sets up the page in the first place really matters. Somewhere along the line Google is going to have to address the issue. What happens if the person working at the company lets say they are the head of social media leaves the company.
My first thought is what if Scotty Monty leaves Ford and goes to work for Chevy? How would he transfer the Ford business pages if they were set up under his account. Even though he is now working for Chevy he would maintain control over the Ford Business pages on Google+. Scary thought and even though this is way out there it could happen. I don't even want to think of the headache brands are going to have when they figure out the pages are being made under the personal social media account of the person that owns the social media company they hired. You know it is going to happen.
Enough about that lets look at how it is going to clean up the search results. It's very simple, every time a page is looked at they will check for the rel=author code and place that site above the one that doesn't have it.
Spammers are not going to insert the code along crappy websites and tell Google that they own them. Sure they will put code for analytics reasons but this changes everything as it is linked to a Google account. Sure they can create multiple accounts but that is a time suck. This is going to be very interesting. I think it will change the serps forever, or at least it could.
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David says
Hello Vinny,
Ah you do make some good points but the only insight i’ve learned from Google is to sit back and wait… first move advantage seems to kick you in the nuts. They need the ability to allow for multiple users to manage them and also to be able to transfer them. Most clients won’t have the time or patience to setup the profiles and will leave the task to their SEO or Social Media folks to do the work.
I do see some of the more paranoid not wanting to link themselves to some of their crappy sites but if there are multiple owners or joint partnerships who is the name on the author code? If they stick with using meta tags and rel= tags I think a majority of websites will implement it but if it requires additions to a template or extra buttons then it’s going in their too hard basket.
I’m not sure it can be a trust factor just yet until they expand the “verified” profiles functions, but then that also makes it a potentially self-enforcing cycle… atm you get links because you are there at the top and people trust you and link to you… now with Google social skew you get more shares/visits because you are popular/verified so you get more shares/visits because you are there… not because your content is any good or you are an authority on that topic/area. Google has a good opportunity to not build a new game metric where I need visitors so I get links so get more visitors I need more links to get more visitors…
Some of that was kinda ramble but it’s interesting idea of using social to bring website owners out of the woodwork, just not sure business or Google is ready for +pages just yet….
vinny says
You are right with a sit back and watch when it comes to Google. Seems like they mess stuff up a lot when they first come out with a “Beta”.
I am jumping in now. I am a big fan of Google+