One significant feature of social marketing is distinguishing how many people like your content. The trend was started back with FaceBook with their iconic "thumbs up" image. Nowadays the ability to "like" something on any page, post, or article is standard fare.
This ability to "like" something is so much a part of viewing the web that is has, in a way, become a sort of reputation builder. Think about it, when you go to a page and see a lot of "likes" you probably enter a silent judgement .... the content is interesting, at the every least and maybe even informative.
Plus, this business of "liking" is an easy way to engage viewers/readers, which is fundamental to defining a web presence. It may not be a reliable stat as to the value of the content, but it does show traffic and engagement, two important pieces of every web presence strategy.
Issue With G+ Likes Disappearing
On almost any page or post you visit, you will see an ability to easily like it in Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (G+), and Twitter. While I prefer G+ over Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn I cannot continue to use it for myself or clients while the "like" count is randomly set to zero.
As someone who has worked on countless blogs for clients, along with my own blogs, I have noticed a function in G+ that will harm, hamper, and maybe dislodge a web reputation: the number of G+ likes being reset to zero.
For example, this last week, on one post, there were 179 likes on Thursday. Friday morning there were zero. There doesn't appear to be a fix and it's a random problem, as far as I can tell from my research.
I have seen entire blogs where the G+ likes are wiped backed to zero on every post, and I have seen it happen in more than one blog ... and it has happened repeatedly.
An Example ....
Here is an example of a post from this blog: http://ezwebmanifesting.blogspot.com/2014/12/tutorial-improve-your-data-sharing.html
According to Stats counter there should be 22 G+ likes .....
A few days ago there were 22 likes on the screen below - for this specific blog post. But, as you can see on screen shot below, taken this morning, the G+ count is now 1.....
Solution
I found a forum post where they Google is requesting you provide them with some research about your blog: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/blogger/something-is-broken/other/windows/chrome/ITcxrjML660
Other than that, there is no solution, which is why - right now - G+ is pretty iffy to trust as a social marketing tool - IMHO.
While I have only tracked this issue with blog posts, it may well be happening to web site pages too, I am just too busy to track down all the numbers and analyze 'em.
If notice the G+ likes disappearing, I suggest visiting that forum link above to add your name to the list. And, you are welcome to like this post in G+, but there is a 50-50 chance your vote is gonna get erased.
No comments:
Post a Comment