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the Free CMSWire NewsletterGoogle hit hard this week with the release of several new offerings: Google+, social tracking within Google Analytics, mobile landing pages and instant Web aggregation.
Google+ is Google's Big Social Media Play
Well guys, the rumored social network from Google was realized this week. Currently, (and to the surprise of no one) Google+ looks a lot like Facebook but with slightly different names for all the areas. Users get Circles of friends instead of just friends, and video chat Hangouts as a more visual method of immediate interaction. For the camera-shy, Huddle will offer chat or a group messaging service.
Circles is arguably the platform's biggest innovation as it addresses the idea that we all have different circles of friends and don't want to share all our info between them:
Google soft-launches the service at a time when some experts are guessing that Facebook is at the peak of its success. With some users looking elsewhere, Google could benefit massively from any surge in the new social media direction.
The trick will be getting users to bring their friends over, too, and while Google's Chrome browser could help act as a rallying point, with it baked-in, other browser users will have to accept another Google page into their lives.
Google Analytics Now Tracks Social Engagement
As it turns out, the Google+ reveal wasn't the only thing up the Internet giant's social sleeve this week. Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools now provide tools for tracking the impact of tweets, likes, +1s and more on your website’s traffic.
Head on over to Google Webmaster Tools and you'll find a new “+1 Metrics” section, which provides reports on the impact of the Internet giant's new-ish button on search in three flavors:
- Search Impact report: Find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out. Do this by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations.
- Activity report: Shows how many times your pages have been +1’d, from buttons both on your site and on other pages (such as Google search).
- Audience report: Displays aggregate geographic and demographic information about the Google users who’ve +1’d your pages. To protect privacy, Google only shows audience information when a significant number of users have +1’d pages from your site.
Perhaps even more useful is Social Plugin Tracking. The tool compares the impact of different types of social actions on your website. It tracks +1s, tweets, Facebook Likes, Facebook Sends and other social actions.
Create a Mobile Landing Page with Google Sites
Google Sites was granted a timely boost with the addition of a mobile component for creating simplified landing pages this week.
The driving factor behind the addition should be pretty obvious, but in case you're just joining us (here on Earth), here's the company's official explanation:
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