Do You Need a Google+ Profile?
Category : Google+
Google+ has been around for awhile now and I have written about it on a number occasions. It was thought to be a challenger to Facebook at one time and this may be the case in the future, but for the moment it seems to be going down a more commercial route, most notably by allowing people to G+ (i.e. recommend) website search listings and adverts on Google.
Google is now taking this a step further to ‘encourage’ people to go down the Google+ route by automatically creating a Google+ profile for anyone with a Google account – Adwords, Analytics, Blogger, etc. This reason alone should have you signing up to Google+ to create your own profile rather than have one created for you, but the G+ element looks like going further.
Google is working towards online content having an author, rather than being anonymously created. This isn’t a bad thing as it should improve the quality of website blogs and websites. How would this be authored? Through your Google+ profile of course!
So your Google+ profile should eventually tie into your web site(s) and any other online content using authorship tags.
Indications are that this will also become a ranking factor on Google searches. So if you run a business, this means that you, and your key staff need to create Google+ profiles so that when blogs and other content are published they have authorship. The implication being that anonymous authorship will be downgraded in the future.
Obviously this won’t happen overnight, but it is going to come, so best to be prepared by claiming you Google + profile now.