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Google Algorithm Changes
Yes. This is True and below you can find a fully detailed explanation of the current situation. Check this in their our search results here. As a Google Plus user I first noticed this 6 months ago and thought it was a glitch. Problem is it wasn’t, and nothing changed since then.
I call this: the “Google +” Branding Bug.
Let me explain.
Each brand may be searched, in a search engine, by various brand name variations. In our case the most important are:
- Google+
- Google +
- Googleplus
- Google plus
- + a lot of typos
Just search for “google +” and you will see that the Google Plus site is nowhere to be found in the first 10 results.
These variations are sending a huge amount of traffic and represent a large segment of their branded traffic (if not the largest).
Just to get an idea on the volume for the broken query “google +”, here is a snapshot from Google’s Trends.
The “Google +” site is nowhere to be found in the top 10 results so users are forced to do another query. It’s natural for people to search for keywords using spaces (even for brand names). The same is for cognitiveSEO. It is both searched by “cognitiveseo” , “cognitive seo” and “seo cognitive”.
The problem here is that the + sign is a reserved operator for Google queries. The biggest problem here is that the user doesn’t care. This forces the user to do another search using another keyword that might or might not lead him to the correct site.
Another interesting fact is that the Google Suggest Box doesn’t care about the “+” character as a reserved character and it shows the “google +” search as the top suggestion for this keyword variation.
Also the related searches suggested for the “google +” query are “google plus” and “google + login”. Searching for “google + login” will not give a direct link to the Google Plus site.(as you might have hoped for)
It’s like a Cat & Mouse game between Google and the User …
Yahoo/Bing Ranks it Better …
Just like that. Yahoo and Bing rank it in the top 10. Bing is kind of volatile giving various results depending on your location but Yahoo is more straightforward and positions Google + on the 7th position.
Other Brands
The same is happening to “Nike +”, another brand with the + sign in their brand name. This is the good search.
Conclusion
It is just super annoying to double search each time for such brand names.
Maybe Google should address this issue in one of the next algorithm updates or simply correct the bug. It would just simplify the life of their own users and improve the traffic to the web properties that are really searched for.
…
or stay away from using punctuation in your brand name. Bad luck if you already did that …
Hopefully Google will find a way to sort this out.
Totally agree, I’ve notice that before. Sometimes it is very hard t get to the Google+ official pages using….uh..Google
Razvan, Google gave up the “+” search operators, some time back. Basically, the plus sign is now ignored in a search query. The query “google +” will return the same results as “google” – check it.
Indeed, that’s a big issue for them.
I thought that the reason they dropped the “+” operator was to show up the home page of G+ when someone was searching for “google+. Which they do, if you don’t add a space…
However it seems like a lot of us add a space before the plus sign and therefore Google is in a catch 22 situation 🙂
Hi Traian,
The + is still having a special use. Not the old operator … but the new operator
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433
Plus sign (+) Search for things like blood type [ AB+ ] or for a Google+ page like [ +Chrome ]
I do believe this is not correct for brands that contain any of these in their brand name:
Plus sign (+) Search for things like blood type [ AB+ ] or for a Google+ page like [ +Chrome ]
“At” sign (@) Find social tags like [ @google ] or [ @ladygaga]
Ampersand (&) Find strongly connected ideas and phrases like [ Brothers & Sisters ] or [ A&E ]
Percent (%) Search for a percent value like [ 40% of 80 ] or [ 10% of .1 ]
Dollar sign ($) Indicate prices, so [ nikon 400 ] and [ nikon $400 ] give different results
Hashtag/number sign (#) Search for trending topics indicated by hashtags like [ #lifewithoutgoogle ]
Dash (-) Indicate that words around it are strongly connected as in [ twelve-year-old dog ] and [ cross-reference ]
Underscore symbol (_) Connected two works like [ quick_sort ]. Your search results will find this pair of words either linked together (e.g., quicksort) or connected by an underscore (e.g., quick_sort).
If you have a google account, then shouldnt you need to search for the URL? I mean its practically linked to your name in the top bar (once you login)!
I also did a quick Google, both G+ and Google+ show me the top ranking result as plus.google.com (I was logged in). Put the space in, and it gets treated as an operator!
I wouldnt call this a bug.
Hi Prasad,
Problem is when you are not logged in and when you want to search on google for the site.
I know there are a lot of options to sign in in google like the button and so on, but there are a lot of people whom are searching for “google +” and don’t get what they search for. This is the same for any other brand that might have punctuaction characters in their brand name such as “nike +”.
It is not a normal bug , but a bug that is correlated to a specific usage pattern. It is still a bug as the user is presented with the wrong information.
May be the glitch has been fixed (at least half way) since the article was written, as I typed in google+ in Google and it came up #1 in organic results. Only if you you leave a space between Google and + then you can not see it on the first page.
Hi Asher,
Nope the issue still exsts. Maybe Google does not have the same opinion as us. Maybe they do not care … who knows.
google+ always ranked ok.
“google +” never did.