Consumer Google+ now closes in April 2019, not August. Find out who can sign in to your page, save the photographs and posts worth keeping in January, remove remaining links, and leave Google My Business alone.

Four months sooner

Yesterday Google said consumer Google+ will close in April 2019. When the closure was first announced in October, the date was the end of next August.

The jobs have not changed. In October they could wait for a quiet week; now the weeks left before April include the holidays, and most of the quiet ones fall in January.

Google says it will explain over the coming months how people can save what they posted, and it has not yet named a day in April. Plan as if it were the first.

Google+ for organisations using G Suite carries on. So does Google My Business, which runs your listing on Maps and in search results and was never part of the closure.

What the earlier date changes

The second is the one that can eat the time. A page set up years ago by someone who has since left may be managed from an account nobody at the business can open.

Who can sign in to the page

A business page on Google+ is managed through Google accounts, and only its owners and managers can change it or download from it.

Find out who they are this month. If the only owner is a former employee or an agency you no longer use, ask them to add someone from the business as an owner. It takes them a minute.

If nobody can be reached, start now. Recovering an account through old email addresses and phone numbers is slow, and far less stressful in December than in March.

While you are in, look at the managers listed, and remove anyone who no longer works with the business.

Save first, tidy second

Saving is the only job with a deadline that cannot move, so it comes first. Links can come down in any week; anything left only on the page should be assumed to go with it.

Look for the original photographs before downloading anything. They may still be on a phone, a camera card or the business's shared drive, at full quality.

Keep the text of any longer posts too, especially ones explaining how the business works or answering common questions. Those can become pages on the website.

For the rest, Google's Takeout tool exports Google+ content, but it has to be run by someone with access to the page. Set a date in January to do it, rather than the last week of March.

Links and buttons, done or not

If the Google+ icon, +1 buttons and share buttons are still on the site, they come off before April, along with the page's address in the hidden code that lists your social profiles for search engines.

If they came off in October, check that the change held. Theme updates can restore a default row of social icons, and posts published since then may have picked up a share button from a plugin's settings.

A look at the footer, one recent post and one product page usually settles it.

A worked example

A twelve-room hotel in a harbour town opened a Google+ page in 2013. A marketing coordinator posted there weekly for three years: rooms after the renovation, the harbour at dawn, local festivals.

She left in 2016. After October's announcement the hotel removed the footer icon, but nobody could sign in to the page itself, which still held hundreds of photographs.

The page turned out to have a single owner: the coordinator's own Google account. The general manager reached her through a former colleague, and she added him as an owner the same afternoon.

This week the hotel downloaded about two hundred photographs, several better than any on its website. It also found one more trace: a line in the booking confirmation email inviting guests to follow the hotel on Google+.

The line came out, and the best harbour photographs went onto the hotel's Google My Business listing and into the website's gallery.

Places that are easy to miss

Beyond the website, the address hides in booking confirmations, auto-replies and the templates an ordering or booking system sends on your behalf.

It sits in the website field of other social profiles, in old directory listings that once asked for it, and in the links section of a YouTube channel.

None of these turns up in a search of the website itself, which is why they survive an otherwise careful tidy-up.

Put the photographs where people look

On Google, the place people now see a business's photographs is its Google My Business listing, beside search results and on Maps.

Saved photographs belong there and on the website: recent, real, and showing what a customer will actually find. A handful of strong ones on the listing does more than two hundred in an archive folder.

Leave everything else on the listing as it is. Tidying up Google+ involves nothing in Google My Business, and deleting the wrong thing there would cost far more than an old page left alone.

The counter-case

A business without a Google+ page has almost nothing to do, beyond checking that no default icon or share button has crept onto its site.

A page with nothing posted on it needs only its links removed. There is nothing there to save.

And this is not a large job. For most sites it is an afternoon's work for whoever maintains them, not a project.

For everyone with a page: sort out who can sign in, save what matters in January, and let the rest close on its own.

Before April

  1. Check who can sign in to the page.
  2. Recover access now if nobody can.
  3. Download the photographs in January.
  4. Check the site again after theme updates.
  5. Search confirmation emails and auto-replies.
  6. Update other profiles that link to the page.
  7. Add the best photographs to your listing.

Step two is the one that cannot be rushed in March. Every other job takes an afternoon, but getting back into an account nobody can open depends on people and messages outside your control.

Why none of this was urgent in October is covered in Google+ is closing next year.

Frequently asked questions

What did Google change on Monday?

It brought the closure of consumer Google+ forward from the end of next August to April 2019, without yet naming a day. The G Suite version continues.

What should a business do first?

Check who has access to the Google+ page. Saving photographs and posts depends on it, and recovering an account nobody can open takes the longest.

How do I save the page's photographs?

Look for the originals on phones, camera cards and shared drives first. For the rest, someone with access to the page can export its content with Google's Takeout tool.

What if we tidied up in October?

Check that it held. Theme updates can restore default social icons, and newer posts may carry share buttons. Then search confirmation emails, auto-replies and other profiles.

Should we change anything in Google My Business?

No. The listing is a different product, and nothing about it changes. The only thing worth doing there is adding the best saved photographs.

Where else does the old address hide?

In booking confirmations, auto-replies, ordering system templates, the website field of other social profiles, old directory listings and a YouTube channel's links section.

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.

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