Google announces Google+ pages for brands

Google has unveiled Google+ Pages for companies and brands. This marks a long-awaited policy change for the company, finally allowing other businesses and brands to be able to openly creating Google Plus profile pages and adding other Google Plus users to their “circles”. Brands and companies can create their pages here. 

Burberry, MailOnline, O2 and Mumsnet.com are among the first UK brand partners to launch pages on Google's social network, Google+, as it steps up its challenge to Facebook.

Burberry's page has gone live, as have pages for Angry Birds, Save the Children and Chelsea FC.

Google+’s 40m members will be able to add brands to their ‘circles’ and recommend them via the site’s +1 button. Brands can also interact with consumers via the ‘Hangouts’ video-calling feature.

Google+ brand pages will appear in Google search listings, from where they can be added to users’ circles. Users can also ‘direct connect’ by searching for a brand name with the prefix ‘+’ to automatically add them to their network.

In June, several brands, such as Ford, rushed to set up profiles on the site. Google has since developed a version of Google+ optimised for brands and businesses. 

Google+ Pages allows every business big or small  a chance to maintain a profile on Google+ and use the service to communicate and interact with consumers. Here's a video Google made showing the features of the new service:

The article first appeared on Marketing Magazine .