Brands on Google+ are seeing tremendous growth in followers, according to a new report from SEO and digital marketing startup BrightEdge.
Google+ was famously closed to brands when it launched, something that changed with the launch of Google+ Pages in November. Now, the number of users following the top 100 brands on Google+ has increased 1400 percent, from 220,000 in December to 3.1 million in February, BrightEdge says.
In fact, the top brand, H&M, has more followers now (462,000) than all of the top 100 did in December. The report says most of the growth is happening in the top 10 brands, who have 10 times as many followers as brands 11-100 combined. BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu says that on social networks, it’s not unusual for bigger brands to dominate, but the degree to which that’s true for Google+ is “a little unusual.”
Yu describes this growth as a natural step in the evolution of brands on the site. First, they had to create Pages. Now they’re amassing followers. Once they have those followers, they can start thinking about different ways to engage those fans. (So it may also be too early to start looking at other types of engagement data.)
Another sign of maturity and growth, Yu says, the fact Google is no longer the most-followed brand (although it’s still in the top 10). The report also highlights a few of the brands that don’t have a presence on Google+ at all, including Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Apple.
Oh, and just to give some perspective, the report says the consumers interacting with the top 100 brands on Google+ still add up to less than 1 percent of the number on Facebook.
A Google project headed by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google+ is designed to be the social extension of Google. Its features focus on making online sharing easy for users. “Circles,” think social circles, akin to Facebook’s lists. “Sandbar,” a user-unifying toolbar. “Sparks,” a search engine for sharing content between users. “Messenger,” a group messaging app that allows users to share with certain “Circles.” “Hangouts,” group video chatting designed to allow up to 10 users video chat at once. Each Google+ user can replace his...
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
BrightEdge is the on-demand leader for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Management. The company was started by Jim Yu and Lemuel Park to serve the unmet demand for enterprise-class technology that would help marketers extract the most value out of organic searches. During the two years following its inception, BrightEdge worked closely with the leading SEO practitioners at the largest companies to develop what is today the most comprehensive and user-friendly SEO platform. As a result, many Internet savvy companies...
Jim Yu is the founder and CEO of BrightEdge, the leading enterprise SEO Platform. He combines in-depth expertise in developing and marketing large on-demand software platforms with hands-on experience in advanced SEO practices. Prior to founding BrightEdge, Jim was at Salesforce.com where he led a core part of the platform products team that delivered the industry’s first cloud computing platform. At Aether Systems, Jim ran the product management team responsible for the product strategy, roadmap, and delivery of the...
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