Two days ago I wrote about the extinction of PR10 sites and specifically talked about the Google downgrade from PR10 to PR9. I said that Google was unable to keep pace with social networking site Facebook because Google does not give websites a reason to link to them.
Well, yesterday Google launched Google Plus and this is exactly what Google needs to compete with Facebook.
Facebook heralded wild success as a person-to-person social networking site but achieved a meteoric rise in recent years because they allowed business, websites, groups and organization to have their own pages allowing them to engage with the people who were fans.
Google Plus is not quite where it needs to be to be able to achieve mass adoption by businesses but they are on their way.
How will they be able to do that? By reaching outside the Googlesphere of products and sites and achieve presence on everyone else’s websites the same way that Facebook did, with badges.
Go to just about any website and you will see a nice little Facebook icon or Like Us badge telling visitors that they can connect on Facebook with the business, etc. and they will get something in return (discounts, solutions to issues, etc.).
In a similar fashion, I have already mocked-up a “Circle Me on Google Plus” badge (I am not a graphic designer but check it out in my right sidebar). UPDATE: Just found a set of icons for Google Plus that could be used as badges here – http://www.box.net/shared/b9gm7x3codas575dxqcc. The badge links off to my Google Plus profile and if you are logged into Google Plus you will see a red button in the upper right corner labeled “Add to Circles” that looks like this:
What this does is allows people to create Circles of their favorite products and monitor that stream for information about deals, new products without the interference of your friend’s new puppy photos and posts about who drank too much last night.
So, as much as Google may want to hang there hats high on the achievement of Google Plus, they should get on these badges ASAP as well as begin to role out profiles that are geared toward businesses to begin the adoption of these badges outside of the SOSG (Seriously Obsessed Search Geek) community.
Also, if anyone much more skilled with design wants to create some Google Plus badges feel free to pimp them in the comments below. I know I could use one that looks awesome!
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