61 Percent Of The World’s Top Brands Already Have Google+ Pages

It’s been just over a week since Google launched business pages and already a whopping 61 percent of the world’s top brands have created Google+ pages.  However, site, search and social management platform BrightEdge reports that these brands are having mixed success.  They report that big brands like Coke, McDonalds and Verizon are attracting only dozens of fans.

The BrightEdge study analyzed the world’s Top 100 brands and found that a collective total of all of these brands’ fans on Google+ was only around 148,000 while their collective total of Facebook fans was a whopping 300 million.
CEO of BrightEdge Jim Yu says, “Brands have been quick to embrace a presence on Google+, but clearly there is a long way to go in establishing social networks that really have scale and deep user engagement.  Now the real work begins for these brands if they want to extend their social presence on the Web from Facebook to the new Google+.  And it will be interesting to see how these communication and marketing channels will grow in a way that remains meaningful for the world’s top brands.”
BrightEdge also reported that of the 61 percent of brands that created Google+ pages, only 12 percent were displaying links to these pages on their home pages whereas 53 percent of the Top 100 brands display links to their Facebook pages.  This could, of course, be due to the fact that the Google+ phenomenon is still pretty new and these brands may be waiting to see how their pages catch on before doing an overhaul of their site design to add the link.
I also think it’s important to point out that many of these brands have been accumulating Facebook fans for years and they’ve only been on Google+ for a little over a week so I don’t really know if it’s fair to call out Google+ business pages as ineffective just yet.
What do you think?  Are Google+ pages a waste of time for brands or do you think we’ll see them pick up in the coming weeks and months?  Do you or do you plan to follow any brands on Google+?

By Megan O'Neill  at SocialTimes