Google plus

As they say, if you don’t know what it is…..google it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-google-plus-2011-6?op=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B

It is basically facebook, but google’s version, and it appears more people use it for business as of right now. Our SEO/web guy had us sign up a while ago. He told us having it will help our google search results. Makes sense from a business perspective that google rewards their own, whether right, wrong or otherwise. It is free if you have a google account, so not sure why they are saying $399 for you Gordon. I’m sure they “optimize” it, or something like that that probably does help you, but isn’t worth the money over what you can do with it on your own. The new website company that corporate is about to roll out may be able to help people with getting this set up as well.

You should NEVER pay to update any Google listing. The only time Google will actually call you in for one of three reasons:

1. A new listing is being created and you were randomly selected for human verification. This happens very rarely but does occur.

2. Someone has reported your listing as a closed business or some other major issue. Google will then call and they will pretty much say this is so and so from Google and they would like to verify some information. They will never ask for money for this and if they do they are not really Google and scamming you.

3. Certain listings are on a Hijack alert status. You will know if this applies to you as you would have already spent allot of time on the phone. This occurs when competitors on a regular basis try to remove or hijack your listing.

With that said Google Plus is a social media service being rolled out by Google to (attempt to) compete with Facebook and Twitter. You can signup for free and you do not need to pay someone to optimize it as it is very early in the process and most likely will not make it. Just signup with Google and fill out the basic information and your done. The only other thing to consider is adding a link on your website to your Google Plus.