At the start of November, Google announced Google + pages so that businesses, organisations, groups, and anyone who wants to can create their own Google Page. At the same time they also announced that users of Google + and Google AdWords would be able to link the two, adding a social aspect to sponsored ads.
Before social extensions, to see that people in your Circles have +1'd an item, they would have had to have +1'd the landing page that the ad is going to. With social extensions enabled on your account, Google Ads will show anyone in your Circles who has publicly +1'd a page on a website, a search result or a Google Plus Page. This makes the likelihood of seeing a +1'd result far higher than previously, and increases the importance of spreading word of your Google Plus Page as far and wide as possible.
For local businesses, this tool could prove extremely useful. A study back in 2010 by Harris Interactive showed that 71% of shoppers say that recommendations from friends and family impact their purchasing decisions and I feel that this is especially true for local services such as solicitors, accountants, plumbers etc.
If you're running a Google AdWords PPC campaign for a local business, whether you are bidding geographically or by localised keywords, linking your Google Plus page and Google AdWords account will increase the chances of someone clicking through to your ad, if someone in their Circles has already +1'd your page. This also means that it is important to make sure that you're updating your Google Plus Page regularly to encourage more people to add you to their circles. The wider the spread of those people who have you in their Circles, the more people are likely to be influenced by recommendations shown on your ads.
Google have been very clever in doing this because it means that even if users are not impressed with Google Plus and would rather stick to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, they are incentivised to spend time using it in order to gain public recommendations.
So far there have been mixed reviews about Google Plus with poor reviews from The Guardian but good reviews from Wired.com. Personally, I like the Circles idea, but will I actually get round to writing some updates for ‘Work' and other for ‘Friends' when I already don't have much time to remember to update other social media streams? I think that linking Google Plus and AdWords is very interesting and that it could well affect user behaviour in the search engines - I would definitely consider a site that someone I know has recommended. While it should mean that low quality sites receive fewer +1's and therefore appear lower in search results where a user is signed in, paying for +1's will also most certainly emerge (see: this article).
By Laura
Follow me on Google +:
