Google+ Does Not Support Brand Pages, but It Will Eventually

Google tried to make it clear when it launched Google+ that the product was very much in the early stages. Huge interest notwithstanding, Google just wanted to let a few users in to get the ball rolling.

It shouldn't be much of surprise then that there is no support for brands, artists or other 'non-human' entities on Google+, it's aimed strictly at regular users for now.

But that doesn't mean that Google doesn't recognize the need for brand pages and support for this type of users is coming, it's just not available yet.

The issue arose after bloggers and others tried to set up Google+ accounts for their blogs or brands, but were met with an interface and options clearly not meant for this.

Some took it as a mishap, a great one at that, but Google explained that there was no intention of supporting brands or non-human entries in Google+ at this stage of the process.

"Let me be clear - and I'm sorry if this wasn't obvious - we are not currently supporting brands, organizations, and non-human entities in the Google+ field trial," Bradley Horowitz, one of the main people behind the Google+ project responded in a comment.

This was in response to a Google+ post by search expert Danny Sullivan describing his problems in setting up a brand page.

"While we should have been clearer about this, there are some fields in the registration form (asking for a first name, a last name, an age and a gender) that indicate that," Horowitz added.

"Supporting these non-human entities is an obviously great feature - we have no allergy to it at all! It's just not part of the system we are currently testing," he said.

Google+ is just a few days old and Google only revealed the project because it had to start testing with real users, not just Google employees. Building something that has feature parity with Facebook while also having a bonus features takes time.