LONDON – The launch of Google’s new highly integrated social networking service – The Google+ Project, has a number of elements of functionality that hint at Google’s long term intention to lend increasing emphasis to user generated content in search result rankings, according to PR, Social Media and SEO agency, Punch Communications.
G+ has caught on swiftly, already reaching 18 million users purportedly with 8 million of those since the figure was announced as being 10m on July 14th 2011 and with an estimated 1 billion pieces of content having now been shared worldwide.
However, Google’s stated focus on consumers as opposed to brands and businesses, coupled with the fact that links used in G+ are denoted as ‘do follow’ links – the type of links which represent the greatest impact in search engine optimisation activity – indicate Google’s intention to favourably rank content from G+ users within search engine results pages (SERPs) in the future.
Pete Goold, Managing Director of Tech PR Agency, Punch, commented:
“Any open service which allows do follow links is ripe for abuse by spammers, which might indicate that the do follow functionality may be shut down at some point in the future, as with sites such as Digg in the past. However, in the short term, this is perhaps an incentive to encourage use of the service amongst influential SEOs.
“Whilst it’s still evolving of course, Google plus has done a great job of pulling functionality from other services – such as twitter and Instagram – whilst also integrating with other Google services, such as Gmail, to minimize the amount of effort required to get up and running. Unlike projects such as Google wave, which was much hyped but failed to deliver, the growth rate, even whilst in beta mode until July 21st, indicates that this particular service is going to be here to stay.”
For more information regarding Search, Social Media and PR Company Punch Communications, please contact +44 (0) 1858 411600 or info@punchcomms.com.
