Three out of four of the Top 100 brands are now on Google+. In the past two months, Visa, Hermes, and Wells Fargo have all joined the Google+ network with their own fan pages. Growth is slowing, but that’s to be expected, given the astronomical adoption rate among big brands when Google+ was first introduced.
Of those with Google+ pages, 30 percent have these pages display in search results for their brand name, according to the BrightEdge Social Share study for July 2012. That’s six times higher than the last time BrightEdge examined Google+ adoption, back in February.
BrightEdge surmises, “This could be due to the rising importance of social content in search results along with the growing adoption of Google+ by brands and users.”
The top 10 big brands on Google+ have a total of 9.2 million fans combined. H&M and Toyota lead the pack, as the only two in the Top 10 with over a million followers each. Google themselves have the third highest number of fans, with 968,000.
Other insights from the BrightEdge report:
- Red Bull enters the Top 10 at No. 4 with 964,000 followers, up from 870,000 and 698,000 in February and May respectively.
- The Top 10 now has a distinct auto flavor with new entrants Toyota, BMW, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche accounting for 50 percent of the followers.
- Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Sony, Intel, eBay and Amazon take the next spots but are not too far behind.
- Nike, while not in the Top 10, made impressive gains with 336,000 followers – it had no Google+ presence in February.
In their report, BrightEdge notes, “The top 10 brands collectively have thrice as many followers as brands 11-100, as opposed to ten times in February, indicating the rising importance of Google+ for marketers across the board.”
Facebook and Twitter have higher adoption rates among big brands, which is also to be expected, given their longevity in the space. 90 percent of top brands have a Facebook page and 80 percent a Twitter presence.
This report comes as comScore is reporting that total unique visitors to Google+ in the U.S. went from 15.2 million in November 2011 to 27.7 million in June of this year, marking an increase of 82 percent. Internationally, Google+ visits rose 66 percent, from 66.7 million to 110.7 million in the same time period.