The fashion industry’s tentative first steps with Google+

This article will explore four top brands currently competing in the women’s online fashion world. In it, I will be looking at whether they have correctly implemented Google+ across their sites and whether they are taking full advantage of the branding real estate that Google+ provides.

The Women’s Fashion Sites

• Pretty Little Thing
• ASOS
• Missguided
• Boohoo

The Google+ Criteria

I have looked at a small set of Google+ criteria and asked:

• Do they have a Google+ page?
• Have they implemented rel=publisher?
• Have they verified any details?
• Are they engaging on Google+ seriously?
• Are they using rel=author?

Pretty Little Thing

Pretty Little Thing (PLT) does have a Google+ page, has verified its site and is appearing within the Knowledge Info Panel.

PLT is taking advantage of the URL with a live link in all recent posts, just inside the knowledge info panel. However, the company has not implemented “rel=publisher” onsite and has not added the G+ icon onto the blog pages. Neither are they using rel=author on any articles.

They have not claimed their vanity URL, though I would say the company is merely testing the water. PLT’s FB page has 214K Likes, so it does have a working social strategy.

A little on ‘Rel=Publisher & Rel= Author’

Publisher markup should be added to all the site’s pages with a rel=publisher tag. Authorship markup is markup to represent the person who authored the content, such as a blog, news or article page.

To test a page for these and other markups, use the Rich Snippets Testing Tool.

ASOS

Unsurprisingly, ASOS has an exceptional social strategy on Google+.

The company famously launched in Australia without any marketing apart from social outreach and you can clearly see the experience at hand.

ASOS started using Google+ in 2012 and has seen its following grow rapidly.

The company has implemented the rel=publisher and the markup can be seen next to the SERP display. Interestingly, publisher markup has not been implemented in regular SERPs, like authorship but it is used to connect a page with the site and is needed for official statuses and future brand information from Google.

ASOS has not implemented rel=author on any of its blog pages, even though it does have regular writers that contribute to a range of different blogs.

Despite this, the company has claimed its vanity URL and the main Google+ page has been additionally verified as the Official page (the tick inside of badge). This is verified by Google at its choosing.

The Benefit of Google+ and Followers

ASOS is the perfect example to explain what the difference is between FB, Twitter and other social followers to a Google+ user.

Google+ followers are able to see suggested listings for search results when they are logged in, adding additional real estate within the search results. This is referred to as Search Plus Your World (SPYW).

In the above image (I am logged into Google and following ASOS), I searched for Nike Free Breeze-y. Note that ASOS posts mentioning Nike Free Breeze-y are additionally displayed to a follower in the search results. This provides a greater presence for a fashion brand using Google+. It is easy to see that as your followers grow, you can influence their logged in search results.

Missguided

Missguided has a healthy following and this has become apparent with image led industries, as can be seen with their great “view count”. Views give an indication of how active people are within their brand on Google+.

They also have an Official verified page.

Misguided has not implemented publisher markup on their site, though it does have a knowledge info panel displaying for the brand name ‘missguided’.

Unfortunately however, the company has tried to implement authorship markup but have not done so correctly. They have used rf data instead of the rel=author tag, and as a result are not displaying in SERPs.

Brand Name Take Away

Missguided provides the perfect example of the importance of choosing your brand name when deciding to create your Google+ page. Unlike in search, where Google will display misspellings and synonyms, it does not do this in the knowledge info panel.

A search for ‘Miss Guided’ will not display their knowledge info panel, whereas a search for ‘Missguided’ (their Google+ Page name) willl.

**Before creating your Google+ Page, decide ( assuming you do not have a singular name) on what branding would benefit from being displayed in the knowledge info panel. Your analytics will determine what most users search for in your brand name.

Boohoo

Boohoo started using Google+ in late 2012. Unfortunately, the company has not adapted to this platform and have not grown a user base.

Neither has it used publisher markup, but it does have an official page from Google.

Boohoo has tried to use author markup, but has used rf data to do this and so have failed to be recognised by Google. As a result, the author does not display in SERPs.

The Fashion Industries foray into Google+

The fashion industry is slowly adopting Google+ but could certainly connect sites a little better. I assume this is due to Google+ being a new social platform that actually requires certain markup from site to social page.

All sites are benefitting from using Google+ by having their latest posts displayed in search. Some have tried to implement author markup, however not all have seized this opportunity.

On a separate note, I am very surprised that none have implemented any type of schema markup on their home pages. You would think that in a competitive environment such as fashion, brands would seize any, however slight advantage over a competitor.

None of the sites are targeting the new #search carousel

As it stands, there is a wide open playing field available to fashion sites on Google+ in the UK.

By Tim Capper