How about the new Google Plus cover images?
-
I logged into several accounts this morning and have noticed Google Plus has changed their cover images/layout... again! When I edit the cover image, it only allows me to pick the old ratios.
What do you think?
Here to stay?
Was there an announcement or anything about this?
-
The problem with making it transparent is that you would lose 25% or so of the image which means you would still have to add some design to it (ie. making your picture offset or something) The way it is now you can just add a photo and you're done. No editing or Photoshop skills required. I just think it's too 'blocky' (thanks for the verification on that word) and think the 'info card' should be just a slightly bigger size or something to make it work better. You should be able to customize your background color for the 'text card' too. I think it would work better with branding.
https://plus.google.com/+LaBovick/ has their image fade at the bottom and the 'info card' to the left is a little longer and it looks nice that way. If Google could make this sort of design default I think it would look a lot better. Maybe even have the menu fit in that negative space below the image and to the right of the 'info card'.
Unfortunately I don't work at Google anymore so I'll just build a template to make it work. Either way it's much better then the old style.
-
Oh yah, and blocky is a word according to: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blocky
-
The blurred background it just confusing. If it was transparent, and the info box showed the background image underneath instead of a duplicate, I think it would be better.
-
Did you also see that Google Places pages that are listed as having "Service Areas" can now be automatically upgraded to Google Plus pages? Its a slow roll-out, but we're seeing it done when we log into accounts! Sometimes we have to go in and delete the old G+ Business page to leave just the G+ Local page.
-
I'm enjoying the simplistic look of the new G+ page. The top image, where we were forced to scroll up to view it was just a horrible experience for all users. That scrolling really never served any purpose than to frustrate people with the "teaser" effect.
Now, it's all right there as it should be. Removing the thinking, confusion and frustrations and going back to what Google says they strive for, improving our experience using their products. In my opinion, this new page stylization has done that for me.
Patrick
-
Yeah maybe "love it" was an overstatement. I'm just so relieved that the annoying cover image is gone.
-
Nothing at Google is here to stay. I can think of at least 5 cover photo changes already. I didn't see any announcements but I now that the Google+ for Android rolled out yesterday.
Here are my thoughts
What I like about it:
- "that giant monstrosity of an image" that Mike Roberts mentioned is gone! I hated having to scroll UP to see all of it. That was just dumb.
- I like the 'info card' on the left side vs the bottom long drawn out text area we had before.
- I like that the 'info card' doesn't cover ANY of the image. We spend a lot of money on photography and I don't want it covered.
What I don't like:
- It looks very blocky (<-- is that a word?). I think a more artistic design would have been better. www.google.com/+vzpro is very boring whereas www.google.com/+labovick, who designed their cover before to allow for the text area to be easily read, looks great. I think making the 'info card' be a little longer and have a little shadowing behind it would make a world of difference as far as design. I know we can design images to do that now but I think it is an easy adjustment for G+ to do.
- I don't like the fact that the background of the 'info card' is the same image as the one to the right and is extremely blurred. I don't know if a solid color would be better but I just know I don't like it very much.
Ok, I'm off my soapbox now. Carry on...
-
Agreed! I'm sure this update will come as a big sigh of relief to many. The giant image was completely incongruous with the rest of the site and quite jarring.
There's a lot of empty space on pages, though - especially the profile page. Don't you think?
-
Can't say I love it but I otherwise agree with Jesse... that giant monstrosity of an image previously was just annoying.
-
I saw it, for some reason I always get overly excited about a Google plus update, couldn't find a mention of it, not sure if I like it yet.
-
Yeah I love it. So much better than the giant cover photo, that was driving me bonkers to be honest.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google negatively affect the positions in the Bing.
the longer time observed that acquiring links from google+ which is quite pleasantly accepted by Google, it is rather negatively affect the positions in the Bing. Has anyone experienced a similar problem?
Social Media | | Unigenitus0 -
Shortcut Link and Referral domain in Google Analytics
Hello, One of my clients has a Facebook page for his company, and his social media manager posts some promotional and educational posts on daily basis. the social media manager uses affiliate ID's in the destination URL to track traffic and leads that come from the social media and to make it look nicer he uses shortcut links service - bitly. Now I have a few questions about this: I don't see traffic comes from bit.ly or bitly.com in Google Analytics, my question: is using 301 redirect makes Google Analytics understand that the last website which sent the traffic to my website is not the actual Referral website? Is using shortcut links in the social media damages the links value (even though they are <nofollow>links - but still considered as signals from social media</nofollow> Thanks. LorS1nd.jpg
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Help with google+ Please??
Hello, we have recently created a google + page. We have entered our URL however i do not think that it is set up correctly. https://plus.google.com/u/0/110174750926862024398/ There is no button on the header to follow or to +1 there is no mention of our URL within the header, and i have found on many others the url is displayed, linked with a tick and a little globe next to it. i am presuming that i need to link the google plus page to my webiste and verify it some how? But i am struggling to figure out how too do this. can any one help or shed any light on this? Thanks
Social Media | | Alexogilvie0 -
Google manual penalty?
Is it possible to receive a manual penalty on just 2 keywords (or any penalty for that matter) from Google but receive no message in GWT? I am going to give a lot of information here, in the hopes that it will be helpful. My apologies if it's too long. Some of you who are here a lot, may remember my panicked questions in early January. I have learned a ton since then but I still haven't fully solved our mystery and one of the questions that remains is if perhaps one can receive a penalty for particular keywords only and not receive any messages. Our company name, company name.com and company name + location is still coming up #1. We also still have a couple of other keywords at #4 and #7 so it seems our site wasn't penalized. My over-zealousness with the keyword usage on our Home page was pointed out to me here in the forum by Dr. Pete so I made some significant changes on that back in January and continue to tweak although I'm afraid at this point, to do too much that may cause us to lose ranking in the last two good keywords...Meanwhile, our listings on Bing and Yahoo are great and mostly continue to go up. Back Story: We had a huge drop in the SERPS for a particular set of keywords that I feel are our most critical, at the end of December 2012 after being #3 for over a decade. We had a smaller drop in October, that worried me and I worked on the on-page and brought it back to #7 sometime in Nov or early Dec and then it disappeared to "not in top 50". I believe I overdid it. I also got a lot of great advice and leads from Mike Tek and have been having a blast being engaged in reading, learning, following, commenting. I believe I have created some good content since January by creating a company blog and adding posts regularly- 19 so far. I have also gotten some reviews on Yelp, claimed more local listings, worked on our Google+ page, joined Communities, have been promoting our blog posts on FB, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+. We are very short in the inbound link department and I have yet to activate solutions on that score, (and sadly, the majority of our links are in client footers as we are a web design company and I don't think we should remove them without being sure they've hurt us). I am at the point of looking for some help for hire for link building as I am realizing my own limitations.
Social Media | | gfiedel0 -
Google Auth and brands/individuals problem
So you can auth pages with personal google+ profiles - and its being suggested by some that this could now help rankings if that person has lots of people in their circles. So what about brand/companies content? why cant they auth the content with their Google+ profile to get the content ranking better. It doesn't seem right an individual blogger can do this but a company cannot who has written lots of guides. An example is a holiday company has written some awesome content on resorts around the World - how to use the auth for that content to rank higher? - currently only possible to link up an individual as writing the content not the brand/company itself. Any suggestions on this much appreciated. I do not want to lose any gain there might be from this new bonus given from Google.
Social Media | | pauledwards0 -
How do I implement a Google + campaign?
What is the best way to start a Google + campaign? Has anyone had any success with getting G+ for a local niche site? From what I hear there are tremendous seo benefits with Google + . Any tips and advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Social Media | | bronxpad0 -
Does promoting a new page on twitter/facebook help it get indexed faster?
I know this probably won't matter much to people who get crawled on a regular basis, but for those of us who don't, does promoting a new page on social media help it get indexed faster with google? My site rarely gets crawled, but I've recently been adding new content. When I add new content I started to promote it on facebook/twitter and I do get minimal traffic from it. I noticed that a couple of the pages seem to be indexing quicker than pages normally do for me, although I'm not sure if it's because I recently migrated to WP or what..? I know T/FB are no follow sites, but is there a chance that promoting a page may contribute to the pages getting indexed? Thanks for any insight you can shed on the matter. It's more for curiosities sake than anything else. Pete S.
Social Media | | psokoloski0 -
Simple google plus question
Hi, My client www.nlpca(dot)com wants to know if we can just place the google plus button on their website or do we have to have a profile and such and share things regularly? Thanks!
Social Media | | BobGW0