BrightEdge SocialShare Report: Top 100 Brands' Google+ Fan Base Accelerating Fast; G+ Ten Dominating

Many Brands Still Watch from the Sidelines

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Feb 17, 2012, 09:19 ET

SAN MATEO, Calif., Feb. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- BrightEdge, the leading site, search and social management platform for global enterprises, today released its SocialShare analysis showing that Google+ fans (number of people in circles) of the world's top 100 brands saw big growth in the last month from 222K to 3.1M—a 1,400% increase. However, rapid growth among top 100 brands is largely being driven by ten brands that have established a powerful presence on the platform.

These top ten brands, the G+ Ten, account for more than 3 million of the 3.1 million followers (nearly 100%) and bring more than ten times as many followers as brands in the rest of the top 100. Clothing giant H&M now holds the number one slot with 462K followers, while Coca-Cola notably leaped from 1,800 to 336K, a 187x increase. Their direct competitor Pepsi, however, is narrowly ahead with 350K followers. Other notable top 100 brands that round out the G+ Ten include Samsung (372k), Starbucks (335k), Sony (258k), Intel (258k), eBay (253), Google (193K) and Amazon (184K).

The explosion of followers has also led to a Google first—the search giant and parent of Google+ has had the largest fan contingent among the top 100 brands since the social networking site's debut, yet in the last month they have been surpassed by eight other brands and knocked down to number 9 among the G+ Ten.

"While the growth of the G+ Ten is impressive, in contrast we have noticed many companies seem to be taking a slower, wait-and-see stance to the search giant's social offering," said BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu.

Among the top 100 brands on the sidelines were major retailers, travel sites, and automotive brands, and notables such as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Life, and Apple.

There is tremendous interest among large enterprise players in how Google+ will evolve. Although the data shows that brands are embracing the social networking site, the success of the G+ Ten contrasts with lower activity among G+ Laggards (brands 11-100 on the list).

With search driving continued visibility of Google+, we expect to see continued consumer adoption of Google+, but broader brand adoption is still a challenge and increasing attention will be paid to the end-user engagement model. How Google expands from its G+ 10 core partners and spreads more broadly across brands will be closely followed by the industry, and how the engagement model involves end-users may impact the rate Google adds followers. Google+ still has less than 1/100th the number of total consumers interacting with the top 100 brands that Facebook has achieved.

To learn more about the Google+ analysis, please visit BrightEdge SocialShare to view and download the full report here: http://www.brightedge.com/social-share-February-2012-GooglePlus

About BrightEdge

BrightEdge is the leading site, search and social management solution for global enterprises, helping more than 1,100 of the world's largest brands stay ahead in the rapidly evolving Internet landscape. BrightEdge S3 drives more than $4 billion in organic search across industries, harnessing the power of analytics to drive revenue from web sites, search engines and social networks across the globe in a measurable, predictable way. BrightEdge is based in San Mateo, CA and is privately held with financing from Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures.

For more information, please visit www.brightedge.com, friend us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/seoplatform or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/brightedge.

SOURCE BrightEdge