Google Tells Businesses to Stay Out of Google+ (For Now)

Google is asking businesses, universities nonprofits and other organizations to stay away from Google+ for a while.

Christian Oestlien, the advertising lead on the team behind Google+, told the Los Angeles Times that some businesses and other entities created Google+ pages using the current profile designed for people, and not for businesses.

But it doesn't mean that businesses won't get to hang out soon, as Oestlien said engineers are building the business experience for Google+.

Right now we're very much focused on optimizing for the consumer experience, But we have a great team of engineers building a similarly optimized business experience for Google+, Oestlien said in a YouTube video posted to his personal Google+ profile page, as reported by the los Angeles Times. We're very excited about it and we hope to roll it out later on this year. It will include things like rich analytics and the ability to connect that identity to other parts of Google that businesses might use on a daily basis, like AdWords, Google's online advertising operation.

But before Google roll out the Google+ for businesses, it is looking for a select number of companies to test out business pages on Google+, according to the Los Angeles Times' article.

We will be doing some testing, Oestlien said. We're going to take a small group of brands, businesses and other entities and create profiles for them and see how users interact with them via circles, through the stream and even how they communicate with them through hangouts.

Ford Motor Co. is among the businesses that already have a page set up on Google+, the article stated.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Oestlien also said in a post on Google+ that interested businesses can fill out an online form that Google will use to find businesses to match up with early on.

The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses, Oestlien said in his post. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.