Google+ Is Closing Next Year

What Google announced

On Monday, Google announced that its social network, Google+, will close for consumers over the next ten months, finishing by the end of next August.

The version used inside companies through G Suite continues, and Google has promised guidance in the months ahead on saving and moving posts.

A business page on Google+ is part of the consumer version, so it will close along with everything else.

For most small businesses that means an hour or two of tidying, spread over the coming months, and nothing at all to do this week.

Google My Business is separate

The first worry for most owners is the listing: the map pin, hours, photographs, reviews and posts that appear when somebody searches for the business by name.

That listing is Google My Business, a separate product. It is not closing, and its reviews, photographs and posts stay exactly where they are.

For a while Google tied business listings and Google+ pages together, which is why many businesses ended up with both. The listing no longer depends on Google+.

Signing in to Google My Business confirms it. The listing, its reviews and its insights are all there, managed separately from any Google+ page.

What closes with it

• Your business page on Google+, with its posts and photographs.
• Its followers, and any communities the business joined or ran.
• Links and icons pointing to it from your site, emails and print.
• Share buttons for Google+ on blog posts and product pages.
• Comments on an older blog that took them through Google+.

The third is the one customers will see. Each icon will lead to a closed page next year, and an icon that leads nowhere says nothing good about the business behind it.

Nothing urgent this week

The page keeps working for months. Nobody needs to delete anything today, and nothing has a deadline before next summer.

Expect offers from strangers to migrate your Google+ presence for a fee. Ignore any that ask for logins or payment up front; your listing is not affected, and the work below belongs with whoever already looks after your site.

Put the tidy-up in the calendar for a quiet week this autumn instead.

Take the icon off the site

Look at the header, the footer, the contact page and the about page. Many themes put a row of social icons in the footer by default, and Google+ is often among them.

Remove it in the theme's settings rather than hiding it, so the link is gone from the page and not just from view.

Some sites list their social profiles in code that search engines read, so they can show them beside the business's name. Whoever maintains the site can take the Google+ address out of that list too.

Then the newsletter template and everybody's email signature, which are usually forgotten.

Share buttons and widgets

Remove Google+ share buttons from posts and product pages. A button for a network that is closing sends people nowhere, and some of these buttons load extra code on every page they appear on.

Take out any Google+ badge or follow box in a sidebar at the same time.

If an older blog takes its comments through Google+, plan a replacement or switch comments off before next summer, and save any comments worth keeping.

A worked example

A comic book shop in a suburban strip mall set up a Google+ page several years ago, when a customer suggested it, and posted the week's new arrivals every Wednesday for about a year.

The page still held those posts, along with photographs of signing events and a game night. Its icon was in the website footer, on the newsletter template and printed on the loyalty cards.

After Monday's announcement, a regular asked at the counter whether the shop's Google reviews would disappear. The owner was not sure.

He signed in to Google My Business and confirmed the listing, its reviews and its posts were managed there, separately from the Google+ page.

Then he downloaded the page's posts and photographs, saved the event photographs to the shop's shared folder, had the icon taken off the footer and the newsletter template, and added a final post pointing to the website.

The loyalty cards will run out on their own.

Save what is worth keeping

Look through the page before deciding nothing on it matters. Photographs of events, finished work and old premises sometimes exist nowhere else.

Google's Takeout tool can already download Google+ posts and photographs, using the account that manages the page. Google says more options will follow before the closure.

Save what you download into the business's own files, organised by date and subject, and reuse the best photographs on the website or the Google listing.

A last post on the page

Before the page closes, post once to say where the business posts now, with the website address and the newsletter sign-up.

Anyone who still follows the page will see it, and so will anybody who reaches the page through an old link in the months that remain.

Update the page's description with the same details, so the page points somewhere useful until the end.

The counter-case

If the business never set up a Google+ page, the only job is checking the theme's footer for a default icon.

A business that used Google+ actively, with a following or a community it ran, has more to save and a move to plan. The months before the closure are enough to do it calmly.

And a company that uses Google+ internally through G Suite can carry on as before.

For everyone else: take the icon down, keep what is worth keeping, and leave the Google My Business listing alone.

Before next summer

1. Sign in to Google My Business and check the listing.
2. Find every Google+ icon on the site.
3. Remove share buttons and badges.
4. Update the newsletter template and signatures.
5. Download posts and photographs worth keeping.
6. Post once saying where to find you now.
7. Drop the icon from print at the next reprint.

Step two is the one that protects how the business looks. The rest is housekeeping, but an icon leading to a closed page is something customers will actually click.

Comments on the social channels that are staying, including those under your ads, are covered in answering comments on your ads.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.