Today sees the launch of Google’s long awaited brand pages for Google +. Burberry, Mumsnet and Angry Birds have become the first to launch profiles according to The Daily Telegraph. But for any PR consultant, the question of why Google + as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?

Firstly to answer that, a public relation agency needs to think about what the purpose of Google + is. Bradley Horowitch, vice president of Google + comments, “the primary purpose of brands creating a presence on the social network, which hopes to take on Facebook, was to market themselves and talk directly to their customers.” For PR communications, this will mean instant connectivity with fans via the most visited and powerful search engine.

Brands can:

• Use circles to send different messages to audiences – allowing you to segment and target based on demographics and interests
• Create hangouts to interact directly with customers and cover events – how about PR’s offering stories in an exclusive hangout?
• Integrate – Google isn’t going to go anywhere and with an explicit indexing of Google + into it’s search results means it more important than ever for a brand to set up a page to be used. There is also an integration with video site: YouTube making it easier to share photos and videos.

Google has also launched ‘Direct Connect’ which means that whenever a person types ‘+’ ahead of a company or group name into Google’s search engine, they will be directed to that company’s Google+ page if they have one.

It seems that Google + is an extension of a brands presence through Google’s increasing product range allowing them to communicate directly with customers. This coupled with potential SEO benefits shows how serious Google is – it’s not something that’s going to go away.