5 Extra Things I’d Like to See from Google Plus Business Pages

I was, admittedly, rather excited when Google announced G+ business pages yesterday. I’m not quite sure yet whether that’s testament to my being excited by odd things or to Google’s pre-launch marketing of their business pages. It’s likely the former. But anyway, I dutifully headed over to Google Plus to check them out and found their announcement to be a bit premature – they weren’t yet open for everyone.

Cue a twenty minute sulk.

Anyway, this morning the pages were available for all and I set up Tecmark’s page early on. I was, well, very disappointed. Not as disappointed as the day I found out Santa wasn’t real, granted. But probably as disappointed as I was about the Easter Bunny. Business pages are just a bit…bland.


There is not a great deal of functionality and as someone who spends a lot of time tinkering with Facebook business pages, the Google Plus offering feels a bit rushed. There is nothing that really sets them apart from personal profiles and I cannot understand why they were not released in their current form when personal profiles launched.

Google has a tendency to improve things over time, though, so I’ll be patient. In the meantime, here is my wish list of 5 things I’d like to see from Google Plus business pages:

Multiple Admins

For a business page to only have one admin is inconvenient. Facebook lets you have multiple users able to administrate the page. Come on, Google, there’s no shame in copying something so practical!

Friendlier URLs

When you hit the coveted 25 fans on Facebook, you can have a nice friendly Facebook URL, e.g. www.facebook.com/tecmark.  This doesn’t appear to be the case on Google Plus yet with URLs populated heavily with numbers.

Personalised Background

The plain white backgrounds look bland. Twitter and Facebook are more customisable. We want that on G+ too!

Ability to Integrate with Other Social Profiles

Perhaps this isn’t in the spirit of Google trying to take over the world of business social media. But while G+ personal pages allow users to integrate their profile fully with other social profiles, there is no such feature I have yet been able to identify that allows businesses to the do the same.

Improved Integration with SERPS

Google has done something quite cool with search. If, for example, you search +Pepsi in Google, you’ll see the brand’s G+ business page come up with a logo…

I love that. And it certainly explains why Google retired the + sign from its traditional use in search recently. My question is, who will search +Pepsi? Wouldn’t it be better if this showed up for simply Pepsi?

And do you remember when Google and Twitter were friends and you could see real time Twitter results in the SERPs? Well, I think brand searches should incorporate real time results from the brand’s G+ page.

So there you have it! All I want from Google Plus pages is for them to become Facebook pages is a bit of added functionality and some better SERP integration. Please?

Posted on by in Search

About Stacey Cavanagh

I’m the Digital Marketing Manager at Tecmark and a lover of all things Internet and Apple. I’m a chronic #hashtagger, social media-er, compulsive blogger and a self confessed lover of inexcusably terrible jokes.

  • http://techdrink.com Ben Greenwood

    Your last request for better integration with the SERPS – specifically serving up a brand’s G+ page when people search for it – is never going to happen without the ‘+’. Why?

    Because can you imagine the fuss if Pepsi, for example, WEREN’T numero uno for their own name but their G+ page was? Google would be accused of serving its own needs. Rightly, too.

    In Google Search you HAVE to have the ‘+’. In Google+ Search, however, it isn’t required – you get the brand page for a search like ‘Pepsi’.

    • http://www.twitter.com/staceycav Stacey

      Completely see your point… I don’t think that G+ pages should show up above a brand website. They’re not as relevant as the brand website… but I do think they should feature in the search bar when typing, even if below the website.

      It already happens (albeit it without the logo visibility) when you’re searching for some brands that Google suggests you might be looking for their Twitter profile, for example.

      For me, that would certainly be relevant.

      Personally, when I search brands in Google, I’m not only looking for their website. I am, almost as often, searching for their social profiles (even if only to nosey!).

      Cheers for the comment, Ben!

  • http://www.yomego.com Kirsty

    Hi Stacey,

    Great post and I agree with most of your points. With regards to SERP integration, page content will be indexed by Google, and I think that if G+ really takes off, the “+brandname” search will become a standard search for users. If you think about it at the moment, if you want to find a FB brand page on Google (and you would use Google because FB internal search is terrible!), what would you search for? “brandname facebook page”? “brandname on FB”? “Facebook brandname page”? The + operator really simplifies things for users and gives them a “direct connect” to what they’re looking for.

  • http://www.vectorash.ro/victor-stanescu/ Victor Stanescu

    What about a custom page like facebook Iframes? ;) That would be great!

    But the yesterday released Google Pages still lack a lot of features..
    They have brought little to no improvement based on their rival, Facebook pages. The only innovation they brought is the Google+ Direct Connect.

  • http://www.flowsimple.com Pashmina

    I agree with your sentiments. There’s so much hype over Google Plus, and yet I’m just like “meh”

    I was expecting Google Plus and its interface/features to be akin to that of what Gmail was to email when it launched. Gmail launched 7 years after Hotmail, and the broke the mold. Broke all standards. At the time giving away 1 GB was insane, and the threaded style interface changed the way we look at email/text threads forever.

    Google Plus hasn’t done anything of that sort. It’s a nice product, but still behind Facebook. Really, the only incentive I have for learning and using Google plus is because I’m sure it will influence the SEO for any particular company or website.

    And it really bothers me that there’s no vanity URL yet! So 20th century.

  • http://www.twitter.com/staceycav Stacey

    Hi Pashmina! Agreed – I too am using Google Plus mostly because I feel as though there will be SEO benefits. No other reason as yet…. this may change if the Plus population increases.

    Completely with you, Victor… I honestly think it’s a really poor offering by comparison to Facebook’s business pages.

    Hey Kirsty – Facebook’s internal search is so bad that I actually DO type the name of the brand and ‘Facebook’ into Google lol… if the + operator takes off, then agreed, it’s an ace way to find their plus pages. I think there’s some way to go before it gets there though.

    Thanks for your thoughts, all :)

  • Kyle

    allow me to disagree about the Friendlier URLs part. many of the businesses have a friendly url, using the domain http://plus.gg

    for example: plus.gg/pepsi or plus.gg/adidas or even plus.gg/tecmark

    • http://www.twitter.com/staceycav Stacey

      We started using gplus.to as a workaround as well. Still though, it would be far more convenient all round if it was a feature of Google Plus itself :)