Google, the Internet giant launched yet another social network, the Google+. After failures of Orkut, Wave and Buzz, Google has now come up with a new glamorous Google+ which to a common netizen is an amalgamation of the twitter and facebook.
The other day I saw this picture on the Internet and in reality, Google has got it all.
I am not here to boast about the Google supremacy over the Internet, but to consider and examine that what it is that it has still missed and how it aims to achieve it, monetarily and in terms of its command over the Internet.
At the moment a Google+ profile looks cleaner than any of our other social networks, but so did any one of them when they started. So it is just like the honey comb as it grows and grows the fruit is going to be as much. It is quite clear that wherever the users go, the marketers would follow.
Google probably has access to any data that is needed to deduce market insights, business futures or any other estimation or analysis needed for any business to progress in the right direction. But it is the new more interactive and engaging social media data that is driving business decisions these days. What people are saying? What they are propagating? What do they think? What do they want? How do they want it? All these questions are answered directly by the new engaging social media.
At the moment there is not much on the Google+ that looks specifically like Facebook Pages or any other e commerce platform. So how is Google going to make people answer these questions? Firstly the +1 button the equivalent of “Facebook likes” is already catching up, providing valuable data.
Secondly Google has confirmed the launch of Google+ business in near future. One of the attractive features of Google+ is that businesses can segment customers using Circles, irrespective of whether they have their e mails or not. This works vice- versa as well, when customers or common user would create their personal circles like “restaurants” much like the twitter list.
Also one could vaguely predict that how this seamless segmentation data can collate with Google Places. The most beneficial can be the small and medium businesses that struggle to feature in the search engine rankings page. Google+ provides another feature called the Spark, which can provide Google + with handy data to penetrate more into the local search. I believe, in big evolving markets like India and Brazil this can boost E commerce on a local level creating new revenue generating options for Google.
Another very important thing that will affect E commerce is the fact that the whole purchase funnel would process through Google platforms. From potential buyers getting awareness on their Google+ pages, considering it by measuring the +1 from their circles on the SERP to landing on the product page through display adds or organic search. In reality you would only be navigating around the new online Google toolbar. So is G Commerce here to stay and battle it out with F Commerce? Only time will tell.
About the author:
Aatif Basheer works as a SEO Executive at 4ps Marketing, a London based SEO Agency, providing integrated SEO consultancy to a number of B2C and B2B clients. 4ps Marketing houses one of UK’s best R&D teams keeping up with the search engine algorithm changes and, testing & conceiving new ethical SEO techniques.