First Page Google+ Profile Listing Analysis & Optimisation

So after a couple of days using Google+ I received an email this morning notifying me that my Google profile has finally been indexed by Google. Whilst it will be interesting to see the longer term impact this has on the general SERPs and clickthrough to my sites I decided to do a little poking around now…

The first things I should mention is that ever since signing up for the Google+ beta I have seen my profile at #1 position in Google whilst logged in with a little “edit profile” link as seen below. Whilst this can be handy it’s not really a game changer as I’m the only one seeing it (until now!).

Straight after getting my Google+ alert I ran over to search my name in non cookied browser to see if the first page situation had changed at all. Not only had it changed but I found the following listing at the bottom of the first page (where Google is sometimes known to show social content).

Whether or not this will stay is yet to be seen but it does have big implications for those hoping to optimize their Google+ listing. Here is what the listing listing currently contains:

• Full Name – Google Profile
• http://plus.google.com/117893476287021965250
• Location – Job Title at Company Name
• First 64 characters of your profile headline including spaces wrapped in quotation marks
• First 71 characters of your introduction including spaces
• 17 character keyword link to first URL in your profile
• 14 character keyword link to second URL in your profile
• 18 character keyword link to third URL in your profile

Now the as a marketer the first thing you probably going to be inclined to change are the profile links. When you look at my my breakdown above you might be wondering why the keyword links are at such odd character counts. From a quick analysis of the three links it looks like Google are allowing the first 14 characters of a link except where the fourteenth character forms part of another word which is being shown whole pushing the character amount up slightly.

The next thing Google+ listing inspired me to change was both my headline and introduction text. I realised that the headline was almost an exact copy of my job title and instead crafted the headline and introduction text to create a more descriptive and hopefully engaging flow within the Google listing whilst still retaining their own independence on my Google profile.

After hitting the save button on my profile edit I hoped that somehow I’d landed on a magic solution to instant links in Google… Crazy wishing aside it appears that even my Google profile will have to wait to be crawled again for my listing to be be updated. With the profile only just being listed I will have to wait and see how long it takes for a refresh but I’ll be sure to update on this blog when it does.