User Profile of Google

[AlyssaS]

Found a very interesting article that looks at an analysis of about 4,4 million +1 users (using findpeopleonplus.com) and then analyses the profiles.

Here's the article:

[readwriteweb.com...]

About 71% of members are male, and the main occupation is from the IT profession - engineers, developers, programmers and so on.

It's clear that what's happened is that the first invites went out from google engineers to their primarily male friends, and is very slowly spreading through the population. Interestingly, after Google, the main employer was "self employed" - a bunch of internet marketers no doubt!

Anyway - I think it will be sometime before Google uses +1 data to influence search results simply because their membership does not look like the demographic of web users at all at the moment.

For example, for the niches I work in, customers are not on +1 at all, and probably won't be for a couple of years.

I just thought I'd post this as an antidote to all the panic about getting +1'd!

[tangor]

Thanks! I suspect that most who signed up for google+ are Webmasterworld critters. :)

[Juanne]

True. If I weren't into SEO at all I would never have bothered with Google + (let alone get an invite).

[tangor]

@Juanne: Welcome to Webmasterworld! Sadly, I suspect that most of the members of G+ these days are those here, guys and gals alike, seeking the next money stream... and (my opinion) it only gets more difficult from here on out... google gave us only so much free money before they clamped down on THEIR dollars... (which makes perfect sense).

[viggen]

...interesting enough i have over 100 contact on Google+ from archaeologists, i have a personal interest in this and was amazed how many of those are already hanging out there... and i found many that i havent discovered on Facebook and Twitter...

[whatson]

It will be forced upon us within time. Google is taking Windows, Groupon and Hotel sites head on, Google + is them taking on Facebook now. Greedy web domination.

[AlyssaS]

whatson - I personally think it will take a while (as in several years). Some of the people I sell to are not even on Facebook, after all this time. And just because they are late adopters doesn't mean they are not profitable customers!

The demographics in that article explains why Google is finding it so easy to nuke fake +1's - after all, they have a profile of the plusser - why would a male self employed person from Indonesia +1 an acne site or whatever?

The amount of time and money people are wasting on this is crazy. My advice is stick a +1 on your site and then let it be, and get on with the normal stuff of ranking.

[netmeg]

I'm confused, are we talking about Google+ or the +1 button?

[engine]

@netmeg, I agree with you, this has been the confusion with the + thing from day one. It's Google that invited confusion.

+1 = a like, or recommendation
+ = google's social network.

The original story is about google+

I tweaked the title of this thread.

[indyank]

But people here seem to think when you +1 a page, it is automatically shared on Google+. But folks, it doesn't work like Facebook or Twitter right now.

I don't know whether google wants it to be like this but it sure doesn't make sense if you aren't integrating them.Google copied Facebook but just to be different, they introduced the concept of circles (which is very similar to groups in facebook). Google says that you can choose to share certain things with a circle while keeping away people in other circles.I think that this concept is creating a problem in integrating +1 with google+.

[AlyssaS]

You can only +1 if you have a public profile - and I think the findpeopleonplus.com site which they used as a database is simply a directory of public profiles (which would include everyone plussing, whether or not they've had an invite to Google+1). But I could be wrong.

[netmeg]

I dunno what it is about Google and the plus sign - apart from +1 and Google+, you also add a + to trigger advanced broad match in AdWords. I myself am nonplussed.

Google+ is mostly just a toy at this point (with a little spam thrown in) You can +1 people's posts, but it doesn't *do* anything as far as I can see. Maybe at some point it juices their profile to be someone that gets +1'd a lot on Google+, but at the moment, all it's good for is letting you know that some people liked your content enough to +1 it but maybe not enough to share it. (!)

+1's on sites actually show up in the SERPs, at least, for those people whom Google believes are in my social circles. If I view a SERP for one of my own sites, it'll tell me I +1'd it (of course, who wouldn't) and also a few of my friends +1'd it too (thank you, you know who you are)

But normal people are nonplussed too. Because Google has done a piss poor job of explaining what any of this stuff means to those of us not in the industry.

On Google+, I have one person in my family circle (who has never logged in as far as I know) and two or three people in my friends circle (only one of whom has logged in as far as I know) and 250 people in my Industry circle. And that's where Google+ sits today.

[viggen]

It's fascinating to see the depth of the connections they build, and how they're using the social web's link structure to make content appear from folks you may not even realize you're linked to.

This URL is hidden in your Google profile (or, at the least, very hard to reach), but it's essential. [google.com...] will show you where and how you're connected to others in your Google account and where they pull in socially shared content. (via Rand Fishkin)

[zeus]

saw profile image next to a search result today, I really dont like that. Another thing how much different stuff do we need in a search, what also gets on my nerves is when you search something image related you get about 20 images in that "text search" if i want to see many images, I search on google image.