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Any article starting with "according to" is never a great start lacking in facts. I'll believe it if i see it but i high doubt Google plus is going anywhere is far to valuable to Google to let it go. People leave jobs come join new jobs not a reason to start fearing the world is going to collapse.

I really don't see any problems with it based on experience but I would suggest sticking with acquiring eyeballs, engaging and getting them to share if for you instead of having each post getting shared on the same accounts. That "might" be a potential problem down the road, especially if you have a lot of them, including the pliggs..ughh.

No one has mentioned authorship here. My local listings have benefited greatly from my Google plus authorship showing up in search. In my experience Google+ has worked well for me, so I feel validated in recommending it. Yes it might just be a fad that will eventually be extinguished, but you need to take part and be engaged to get the benefits from it. It is another free channel to reach your audience and being linked to Google should provide higher authority, because they can directly measure engagement. Google plus is also an excellent learning resource, with some terrific content being shared by authorities in every field. Content on Google+ needs to be visual. Yes your posts can also show snippets of content and link directly to your site, but a visual hook is going to work well, because of the speed at which people scan through the posts. Having title text within the images can also be beneficial. I have been on Google+ almost from day one, and the access to game changers and authority's in the field of SEO and SEM has been invaluable. The best resources for Google+ engagement are on Google+. Just type the question into the search bar and the very latest posts and information is there for you to see. Do you need to be engaging on Google plus in this industry - well yes, because why not?

Thanks everyone. I appreciate it.

Hi, Federico is right - there is no good evidence that a large number of tweets directly influences the rankings of a page... it is a good signal, but it is not nearly as directly correlated to rankings as links are. Definitely not saying that Twitter campaigns are useless: I assume with some confidence that Google analyses content's popularity and spread on Twitter and will have a good grasp on what constitutes real Twitter popularity and what is manipulated or done entirely by spam accounts. This could be used as a signal to indicate a page's current popularity, and on-going success would indicate a good resource. This isn't well studied or proven yet though, so keep that in mind when looking at social metrics from an SEO point of view.

Hi Ruben, There is no problem with putting the +1 on any page on your site people might want to share or 'vouch' for on Google+. If it's easiest to add it to all of your pages, that's fine too. I like removing social buttons from pages that aren't likely to get shared, simply to improve page speed. No, there is no concern over speed of +1s as long as they are legit. A popular blog post may easily get 100-200 +1s in a day. It sounds like you already have a G+ community and are trying to build it more. That is a good thing and something Google wants as well. As long as you aren't trying to fake/game anything, go for it.

Hi Oleg With the apparent reason emphasis on social shares likes and links been possibly a more accurate we are determining for the search engines whether content is popular and focusing on this we already have lots of content on the websites. I have initially posted introduction link to each post on our website copy and pasted into to our twitter, FB.and GP accounts with the same link, but the decided that in short bursts I will do unique introductions to the links. Looking at my competition which is above me in the search engine results they tend to be much larger companies and are not focusing very much on social media so will see if the results pay any dividends all the best Alan I'll give you an update for your interest in the future

I've read about this but haven't seen it happen with my own profile yet. Do you know what's contributing?  I'd love mine to show up but can't get it working yet.

Hi there Jane, Thanks a lot for taking the time to read and respond to my question. Your response confirms my thinking that the premise is flawed, and brings into question why the faculties just don't activate their own audience as and when required. Thanks again, appreciate it!

Thanks for your help Phil and Egol! Much appreciated. Will look to try both those social share bars and see how they fair.

That's the new way Google is displaying info on profiles and pages. Before they displayed "+1s", which was a metric which included your total number of followers + all the +1s your content had obtained. Now they've broken that out into total number of followers and total number of views. Who knows how long the new format will last, but we can assume that Google found those numbers to be more useful than the previous format.

Wow, that's good to know about getting blocked! But sorry to hear that you had to learn the hard way.

Hmm... what is your process for trying to reproduce the bias?

If you want their image in the Serps there needs to be an image in Google plus.

Hi Pompero99, I believe you're asking if it's okay for non-local businesses to have Google+ Local pages. The answer is no. In order to be eligible for a Google+ Local page a business must: Make in-person contact with its customers Have a physical street address Have a local phone number If a business can't say 'yes' to all 3 points, then it does not qualify. If I've misunderstood your question, please let me know.

You may find the following helpful - https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1212172?hl=en "Google Accounts can only be recovered within a short period of time after deletion. If you received an error message stating that "This account was deleted and is no longer recoverable," the account has been deleted for too long and cannot be restored by our support team. Some common reasons people see this message include: Your account was disabled for perceived spamming and, because you did not sign in to verify your identity, your account was deleted. You intended to delete a certain product from your account but accidentally deleted your entire Google Account. You never owned this account, and it was deleted by the true owner. If you accidentally deleted your Google Account, you can attempt to restore it by going to our password-assistance page within a limited window of time after deletion. If you’d like to create a new Google Account, visit our sign-up page. Note that you will be unable to reuse your old Gmail username, as Gmail usernames cannot be recreated after they've been deleted."

I appreciate everyone's input. This was very very helpful ;)!

Hi Chris, Recommend that you read: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/11/08/should-you-accept-a-custom-url-for-your-google-plus-local-page/ https://plus.google.com/+GoogleBusiness/posts/JVAgfxKHQ8u http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/10/31/google-custom-urls-facts-tidbits-and-concerns/ I'd recommend going with adding your city/state name to the URL only if you feel reasonably certain that the business is permanently located there. If you predict a future move, it wouldn't be a good choice.

Ah, that's about what I suspected. Tagging back to our FB page was the ONLY thing we did differently in that particular post. I just ran another post with similar content and also tagging our page, but the reach on that one was about what we expected. It's nice when you occasionally find yourself on the right side of the algorithm.

Do you have audiences in each language, are you going to engage with them? There seems little point in having a few FB pages not used compared to one main page that has good engagement and is used. I would look at it that way which way will help your audience and thus improve the brand.