Google Plus – where is the value?

March 27, 2013

After casting my eye on the infographic below there was one particular statement that caught my attention…

Google+ pages appear in search results for 30% of brand terms searches for brands with G+ pages (up 5% from Feb 2012)

In a bid to do some quick and dirty bit of research into this theory, I picked on ASOS (mainly because they use customer bit.ly links which can be tracked). In a small sample of the last 10 posts on ASOS’s G+ page, there were 414 clicks generated overall, but 40% came from a Google search engine (.co.uk, .ie etc.) rather than from Google+ itself.

If you compare the volume of click throughs on G+ to other social networks you can see that G+ is still a way behind. It would be lovely to get hold of the conversion stats behind these clicks to the website but…

Last 10 post clicks

Facebook 26,279

Google + 414

Twitter 6380

Facebook generated over 50x more referral traffic than G+ to the ASOS website, whilst Twitter generated over 15x the volume. So if the value doesn’t really exist in click through traffic, perhaps it is in engagement?

The visual nature of G+ should lend itself to brand like ASOS. But with 1.4m followers on G+ the engagement was low. The average G+ post generated 64.3 engagements (+1s, reshares, comments) whilst Facebook generated 358.1 per post. Essentially, Facebook generated 5x more engagement per post than G+.

Conclusion – the hidden SEO value must be the key

If these numbers (of albeit very quick and dirty analysis) are anything to go by then the real value must come from search performance. The engagement rates and direct referral traffic just don’t add up…

An advanced digital retailer such as ASOS are going to have a firm grip on what works, what drives traffic and conversions. I am sure behind the scenes somewhere there are some great numbers which support the case for Google+.

When already investing in content for Facebook (which ASOS and many other brands do), then extending this to Google+ is not really a great amount of additional resource, particularly as there seems to be little in the way of customer service implications.

Enjoy the infographic below on how users interact with Google+ from Wishpond.

Infographic courtesy of Wishpond

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