Google+ Local Opened to 80,000,000 Businesses On May 31, 2012, Google proved once again that control of the search engine traffic online allows certain privileges. In one afternoon Google converted over 80 million Google Places pages to Google+ Local. There has been a quite a bit of speculation as to what the ramifications of the move might be. As the situation developed what Google has actually accomplished, is the forced growth of their social media platform. There are several factors that suggest Google+ will eventually dominate the Social Media spaces, despite the huge lead that Facebook has in this format. Google now has YouTube and Blogger amongst its web 2.0 properties, along with Google Plus. In conjunction with the Panda and Penguin updates, the social media platforms are more important to your online presence than ever before. Google+ Vs. Places So what are the differences between the Google Places and the Google+ Platform? From an administrative perspective, the differences are minor. From the social engagement perspective, the differences are substantial. Managing the page is the same as prior to the update. One small glitch in the transition, is the failure of the transfer of photos and videos that you may have optimized and uploaded to your Places page, that did not cross over to the Google+ platform. So you are going to have to post new content on the Google+ page. In reality that is the point. That is exactly what Google wanted to accomplish. An increase in posting on the Google+ platform. Google+ provides an opportunity to post social proof beyond just the review posts that were a part of Google Places. Now you can engage your customer base on Google+ in a manner similar to the pattern of Facebook. Google+ Vs Facebook Google+ has a similar appearance to that of Facebook, no doubt it will continue to evolve as the competing social platforms position While Facebook has a profile page and a newsfeed, with Google+ all the action on one page, with streaming commentary from your circles and out to your circles. Which is the second major difference between Facebook and Google. The separation of connections by category, that is possible with Google+. If you want to make a business post to associates, without streaming it to your friend's walls, you can post to the specific circle you want to see the content. I think that this feature may be the difference maker in Social engagement. You can target your audience more specifically with Google+. I do n't know what you think but I don't even like visiting Facebook anymore. The newsfeed has turned into Spam Central. All of the make millions on Facebook courses have taken most of the fun out of it for me. Google Loves Google One thing is for certain Google loves Google. So the activity on your G+ Local page, and your G+ page, are going to be counting in your business' off page SEO, just like in maps. Now, however you have a lot more room to grow your presence on Google+. So the formula is going to be fairly straight forward. You are going to want to grow your circles and engage your customer base where ever possible on G+ local. I am certain that there will be plenty of marketers who are going to be reading the guidelines published by Google, and condensing them into drawn out courses on how to monetize G+ Local. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7243631