Should you use Google Plus over Facebook?

There are lots of people asking which is better social network – Google Plus or Facebook? There are certain advantages of Facebook as it already has an established user-base, a running business model that caters to the users, great apps and ways to connect, etc. Although there is a certain hype about Google Plus that just draws people in – especially the SEO and internet marketing type of people.

I’ve asked some of the most authoritative experts on the internet which they would prefer to use. Let’s see what they have to say:

“As of right now, my answer would be that I would choose Google+ hands down. Google+ now offers the kind of personal interaction we, as an online marketing community, have been craving. Now this might not last, considering that Google+ is still in Beta, but this window of opportunity to get in touch and get noticed by the bloggers that otherwise might be unreachable is priceless.

I would love to see Facebook remain a “family” social network, and Google + gear more towards business professionals, sort of like LinkedIn, just with more dialogue. From SEO perspective, Google+ is priceless and we can’t afford to ignore that. All the initial signals indicate that G+ actions, like shares, +1, etc. might become an active ranking factor in the near future.

Let’s face it: Google runs the search engine ranking show and if we want their attention, we’d better dance when they say we need to. I know I will.”

– Ana Hoffman
Self-made Internet Marketing, blogging and SEO Specialist
(Check out her Google Plus Social Network Tutorial)

“I DO use Google+ over Facebook. I got rid of Facebook over a year ago for several reasons. First, I was just tired of the platform. Second, the stuff showing up in my newsfeed wasn’t relevant to me. Third, I’ve grown quite annoyed over Facebooks practices with privacy and member relations. Fourth, I was even more annoyed by all the apps and friend requests I would constantly have to delete.

Those are the reasons why I left Facebook, and I replaced it with Twitter. Twitter allowed me to follow and connect with industry peers in a way that Facebook didn’t. I’ve been quite happy with Twitter, and it’s the core of my personal brand development strategy.

When Google+ launched, I had mixed feelings. I didn’t like the fact that it was yet another social network that I needed to monitor and build friends on again. However, they did do a great job with importing contacts from your Gmail accounts, and using Circles couldn’t be a more enjoyable to create those relationship connections needed for a social network to form.

I also realized how important social signals are to search results. It’s not hard to see that Google is going to rely quite heavily on Google+ for it’s profile information and social signal mining. If you want Google to recognize you as influential on a topic, you had better build your home on Google+. If at very least you want to understand how Google’s social graph will impact the SEO industry, it would be wise to have a working understanding of Google+. Clients are going to need a strategist who understands how Google+ can help their brand, and if you aren’t using it yourself, your Social SEO strategies are going to be weak at best.”

– Daniel Cristo
Seasoned SEO professional and founder of Fluttrs

“I find myself using Google+ more for sharing my blog posts and other professional updates as those get a lot more traction on Google+ than Facebook. Then for Facebook, I find I’m starting to use it more for personal updates since getting into Google+. I’m not sure what the change has been, but posting links on Google+ gets a lot more +1’s, comments, and reshares than when I post links on Facebook which seems to have dropped in engagement. Regular status updates on Facebook have been receiving much more reception though.

The other thing I love about Google+ is getting to share information directly with specific groups only. Instead of sharing something with everyone that I know half my audience isn’t interested in, I can now just share with that side of my audience thanks to the circles. That in itself is a huge value!”

– Kristi Hines
Freelance Writer, Blogger and Social Media enthusiast

“I would personally use Google+ over Facebook, but I wouldn’t ignore FB as well. We need to use both to get the best out our social media connections. Why? Because no one tells you to stop using Twitter just because you love Facebook more or vice versa, G+ is just another great thing we can utilize to improve our social and SERP standings.

To answer why I would use G+ over FB would take a lot, so I’ll try to keep it short. The reason number one being Google’s ability to recognize our connections on other social networks and thus show our pages ranking better for everyone that is connected to us, having your image show under a SERP result will surely increase CTR, so what’s not to love about that one. One more reason to use facebook, twitter and other social networks as well, but that relates more to +1 button than the network itself. What I love about G+ now are the circles, which you can really play around with and avoid spamming your non-techie friends with SEO rubbish.

Also tagging and geo-tagging, a great thing when sharing geographically tied content and lastly, Google+ is the most active social network at the moment due to all the hype, so things get +1’d and talked about more then they do on Twitter at the moment, and this is a wave we should all ride while it lasts.”

– Zarko Zivkovic
SEO Specialist, CEO and Founder of Practical SEO

For professional content in my particular sphere (web/inbound marketing and startups/technology), I would choose Google+ over Facebook.

First off, I like to be an early adopter of new technologies and platforms. Second, a lot of the people I want to connect with are using Google+. Third, as was shown in our recent experiment, Google+ users seem to be more highly engaged and likely to click

– Rand Fishkin
CEO and Co-Founder of SEOMoz

As of me, I would say that Google Plus should be the focus right now since hey, it’s Google who owns most of the search market. In fact, Google plus has already affected SEO. And they would probably make their social network matter more when it comes to search ranking factors than any other social network. Of course, if they are to do that, they would have to make it so in a way that it will positively impact all users and will be useful to all people.

Facebook is still something not to be neglected though – since it also holds a significant share in the social signals factor. And the established user base in Facebook makes it a powerful sharing tool still. It’s exciting what would happen with these two as they both try to claim hold of the social network arena.