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by TonyBerkman (editor), San Antonio, October 05, 2011

Credit: Google Search
Google + Google Latest Foray Into the World of Social Media

A company that has always focused and prided itself on technology, is coming late to the game of social media, a different skill set, that has practically eliminated the revenue "nut" they cracked.

A year ago people proclaimed the "social network wars were over." Google's recent launch of Google+ is no doubt a game changer. To evaluate the impact of their aggresive entry into social media one can analyze many things including what is the impact of this move on Google and what is the impact of Google + on the social media landscape. This article addressed the impact of Google+ on Google, the business.

Google started out life as the world's premier search engine. Type characters into a simple box and Google spat back the most relevant results based on a proprietary backlink algorithm. At the time of development of their search engine, Google had little idea about how they would crack the revenue nut. Fortunately and brilliantly they discovered and created the first democratized advertising network called AdSense. AdSense is a genius product in that it aligns the intersts of hundreds of millions of small publishers and business owners with Google. Google made it easy for almost anyone interested in the internet to start making money. It was simple. Sign up for a Google AdSense account, grab some code and drop it onto your website. Google then did they rest. They did it very well including identifying the content of your page and matching their ads to the content. They then split the revenue with the publisher / website owner. While their were shortcomings in the model including Google's lack of revealing what percentage of revenue was split with the publisher it was a boon to Google and to that of many webmasters.

Over time though many website owners began to understand how Google's search ranking algorithm worked and started to use it to increase their rankings. An entire Search Engine Optimization industry erupted around getting higher rankings in Google. That industry still exists today. Google however has apparently decided that this backlink algorithm for the most part has been corrupted and that they needed a new metric for determining website and article relevancy. Enter the Google "+1" widget that is starting to appear on many websites. It seems that about 2 years ago Google new a change was necessary and immiment.

The reasons are myriad including the backlink algorithm collapse, the threat of social media behoemeths such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and the syphoning off of traffic from Google searches. Facebok was also tormenting Google with statements such as in a year or two you won't need Google anymore since everything will be done on Facebook including search. With these elements in place it is easy to imagine a scenario where Google was beginning to see the empire that they had created crumble.

Their first move was to dramatically start shifting traffic away from website owners and to their own sites. Their next move was to decrease the amount earned by AdSense partners. This move may have been achieved many ways though it is well known in the webmaster world that Google no longer pays what they used to. Google would likely chalk this up to competition in the ad market and a downward pressure on what advertisers are willing to pay given the glut of sites. While partially true there are many ad networks that pay far higher than adsense. Google must have know that this move was risky as they were essentially giving up on the business model that had allowed them to create their empire.

In retrospect it was a critical move as they were going to get into social and in order to do so it would have been apparent that it was going to siphon traffic from their own search though it would also mean a large percentage of internet users on what we now know as Google+, a social network that currently has zero monetiztion. The cophers had to be full enough to make this jump and "hard left."

They have now made the turn and the question is whether they will be able to earn back the "Google Love" that once existed. It is clear from using Google Plus that many of the ardent and hardcores users are talking-tech-heads that make their living in social media. For them it is a must use platform. If Google succeeds even marginally it will be a platform that they need to understand and communicate about over the coming years.

Google+ may have unwittingly opened up the "flood gates" to new competitors. They have identified holes in Facebooks' platform and introduced some interesting new concepts. The syphoning off of users from Facebook and Twitter will happen though there are some die hard Facebook users that will not change. The same is true for Twitter and LinkedIn. Google will then need to generate suffiicent traffic to be able to introduce advertising onto their site without ruining the user experience. This may not be their strong suit as is evidenced by the smattering of AdSense ads on YouTube videos that have had a definite negative impact on the user experience. Yet it can be surmised that this is necesary to keep the cash flowing while Google + goes from introduction to traction to what they hope will be momentum.

The jury is out on Google+. Like any new venture it will not be as easy or as smooth a ride as the Google team imagines. Competition is fierce and they are entering the turf of giants.

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TonyBerkman is an editor for BrooWaha. For more information, visit the writer's website.