A quick post regarding the hashtags and terms people are using to describe Google+, the new social network. We had problems deciding what to call the application in our recent post and decided to do an analysis, as we know that using the proper hashtag or term means more exposure. Using our social media monitoring tools, we did a ‘quick and dirty’ count of both the hashtags (terms prefixed with a “#”, used mostly on Twitter) and the terms used to describe the application. The charts are below, and you can see that #google+ and #googleplus are most popular hashtags, and Google+ and g+ are the terms used most often. Notice also that the volume for the terms is up to 40X that for the corresponding hashtag, and with the latter considered to be used for tips and by those who are more “serious” about a topic.
Our suggestion? Stick with Google+ and #google+ but remember that the “+” is a special character and may be ‘lost in translation’ in cases such as RSS feeds, tags, etc. (e.g., notice that the “+”‘s have been removed from the permalink/URL when WordPress generated it from the title, and I am unable to create tags for this post including a “+”). Ironically, the Google search engine doesn’t seem to recognize the “+” in Google+! Try searching for “google+ life science” and note that your search is modified, with the results representing removal of the “+” (using “google+” fixes this, but how many users will go to this trouble?). Note also that the #googleplus hashtag fairs more highly than #g+ although it is much longer, while the reverse is true with the terms. To me, this signifies that the tech savvy realize the problems when special characters are used. Each image below links to the data summary, representing a 1 day Twitter search using Comprendia’s social media monitoring tools.
To share this post easily cut and paste: What’s the Hashtag for Google+? #google+ #googleplus #gplus #g+ ? http://bit.ly/omY07c