Mark Traphagen Moderator

Hi, I'm the author of the linked post. I welcome your comments or questions!

@pathaleySays Good observation. I'm hoping under Horowitz's leadership they'll do something to really shake it up this year.

@oompt Oh please always question me! 

@onreact_com I think that is exactly the right takeaway from our study. In fact, it very well may be that Google+ is at least as big as any number of other social networks that everyone labels successful.

@oompt Except that we're here a year later, they just put someone very invested in the platform in charge (Horowitz in place of Besbris, who it is now clear was just a temp caretaker), and I have very reliable rumors that major things are being developed.

Stay tuned for this year's I/O - all I'm going to say for now ;-)

@MaryGreenIM Great questions. My next Marketing Land column will have a number of reasons why I think Google still has a long term plan for Google+. Also, if you look near the end of Eric's article (the one linked here), you'll see a couple of links to strong hints from Googlers that some big things are in development for G+.

So why don't they come out with a strong public statement? First off, I've heard rumors from reliable sources that there will be a big announcement (or announcements) at Google I/O this year.

But overall, I think this is the Google way. They see more than we do, and understand the value that Google+ brings them, which is mostly the under-the-surface part of the iceberg. So they bide their time, knowing there's little point in getting into he-said, she-saids with critics.

Also, as I'll show in my upcoming Marketing Land column, the whole "they're splitting up G+" thing was a massive misunderstanding. No one at Google actually ever said that. The references to "streams" and "photos" and such, it turns out, were just internal Google product designations that have been in place for a long time. Google+ exec Yonatan Zunger assured us in a Google+ comment that there are no plans to split off various parts of G+.

@patrickcoombe I agree. There is likely a great deal more private activity on G+ than people think.

@LuizCent Thanks. The truth is any social network has a ton of inactive, fake, and duplicate profiles. Google+ is going to have a lot more, though, due to things like many people having more than one Gmail address.

If you can get past the subject matter here (it's about a legal brothel outside of Las Vegas) this article contains great lessons about the power of social media using what I call PBRs (Personal Brand Representatives): real people from your business who develop their own audiences on behalf of your brand. 

For more about how to use PBRS, see my article for Moz.

Awaiting your questions and comments about our study!

Victor, we hope you're testing it on your own properties ;-)

Let us know what you find out. In Rand Fishkin's G+ share of this he cautioned that we should see if someone else can reproduce the effect.

Sorry to have submitted this with our branded shortlink, but for some reason Inbound was saying the original URL was already shared (even though I can't find it anywhere!). Here's the direct URL for the post: https://goralewicz.co/blog/negative-seo-with-no-backlinks-a-case-study/

I think the post is too important not to have here on Inbound. 

As many people have said before, the key to success on Google+ is finding other people and communities of people you didn't know before who are interested in what you like to talk about. You've got to be proactive, search for the conversations and get involved to build a meaningful following there.

Is @dharmesh going to return to answer any of the questions in this thread?

Ramin, I agree and applaud your efforts. While I do think it's worth it to invest in the quality of your content, including its presentation, what your CEO did shows that authenticity and personalization/humanization go a long way to connect with people, even if done very simply.

What's your #1 goal for Inbound.org in 2015?

Thanks to MUmar_Khan for submitting my Moz article. I'll be glad to entertain any comments or questions you have here, or on the original post.

You only include Facebook and Twitter as platform scores. Is the Buzz score derived from them alone, or does it take more into account? Perhaps you could partner with Buzzsumo to get a broader social media scoring.

/sub to find out if such a group gets created here on Inbound

Thanks for the mention of our blog http://stonetemple.com/blog. We're getting a lot more regular with our content and will release some amazing data-based studies in the coming months.