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The Google+ honeymoon might be over but many people are still active on the site. As Google+ has some shortcomings, lacking features and usability flaws, there are now numerous tools to deal with these issues. I’ve compiled a list of the most promising ones.
I haven’t tested all the tools, just a few, so please report issues in the comments. I have chosen only those that seemed to make sense and have been recommended by other publishers or social media friends of mine.
Web Tools and Resources
- Google+ Statistics – Google+ statistics shows not only who the most popular users and posts on Google+ are; it also discloses the percentage of women on Google+. It’s only 12%, according to the service.
- Google+ Lists / Google+ Counter - on gpc.fm people are creating Twitter-like lists of people. The members are displayed according to the number of circles they have been put into. This is not perfect yet, as the search for SEO and the best “top SEO/SEM Professionals” shows, but it’s a good start when you search people in a specific category.
- Google+ Directory – this is a Google+ user directory you can submit to. Thus looking for an SEO you’d find unknown people who depend on such directory submissions rather than the really important industry figures. It’s helpful to find SEO specialists in your area though, I guess, as you can combine both search parameters.
- Google+ Suggested Users – this is an unofficial list of recommended users. There are no SEO specialists listed, but the list of recommended bloggers, for example, is quite decent.
- Google+ Search – this is a Google Custom Search engine that searches Google+ profiles and public updates.
- PlusFeed – Unofficial Google+ User Feeds – this simple tool creates an RSS feed for your public Google+ updates. It can’t see the ones you share with circles only.
Firefox and Chrome Extensions
There are lots of Chrome and Firefox extensions for Google+ now. Many of them just work on the Chrome browser, but some work on Firefox by way of being a script for the Greasemonkey extension. Most of the Firefox extensions require one of the latest Firefox versions, and one needs even Firefox 9. I don’t update my FF that often for backwards compatibility reasons, thus I couldn’t test most of them.
- G++ for Google Plus (Firefox/Chrome) – this extension adds Facebook and Twitter to your Google+ interface. It’s very useful for a quick overview. You can switch it off easily too by checking the “off” box.
- Google+ Manager for Firefox
- Google plus reply+ for Greasemonkey (Firefox)
- Google+ Tweaks for Greasemonkey (Firefox)
- Google+ Tweaks for Chrome
- Publish sync for google+ & facebook for Chrome
- G+me: collapse the Google+ stream into a real-time dashboard on Chrome
- GTools+ for Chrome
- Extended Share for Google Plus for Chrome
- Surplus for Chrome
- Quick Hangouts for Google+™ for Chrome
Tutorials and Solutions
- How to Update Facebook Status From Google Plus | Enbeeone3 – this is a simple workaround for cross posting your Google+ updates to Facebook automatically.
- Merge Google+, Facebook & Twitter With The Help Of G++ [Chrome & Firefox] – this post introduces the G++ extension for Firefox and highlights its features. I use this myself and it’s very helpful to show Twitter, Facebook and Google+ in one stream.
- Sharing Google+ to Evernote – this articles explains the several steps required to be able to cross post your Google+ messages to the popular online notebook Evernote.
- How to Share on Google+ from any website – State of Search – Alex Moss of Pleer has developed a workaround solution for a Google+ sharing button. You can add it to your site for your visitors to share directly on Google+, in contrast to +1 votes that show up in an extra tab.
Tools Lists
- Google+ resources roundup: profile page URL shorteners | Cloud High Club – while the old Google Profile URLs were clean and readable (mine was profiles.google.com/onreact), the new ones are long and contain huge numbers nobody can remember. My Google+ profile can be found under https://plus.google.com/113621097289093997513 – So there appeared numerous short URL services specifically for the Google+ profile URL. For example, I use gplus.name/onreact now. This list contains 8 such redirect services.
- Top 5 Tools To Shorten Your Google Plus Profile URLs – this is another list of short Google+ profile URLs which adds screenshots as well.
- 12 Fresh Google+ Apps, Tools and API Hacks – as there is no official Google API for developers to be able to create third party tools, some people have come up with interim solutions mimicking an official API. Here’s a list. In case you are not a programmer or software developer, you don’t have to know what an API is.
- 3 Tools To Cross Promote Google+ Shares On Twitter & Facebook (Chrome) – a small list of Chrome tools for cross posting on Facebook.
- 13 Firefox Add-Ons To Enhance Your Google+ Experience – seemingly most Google+ enhancements are Google Chrome extensions. That’s not true – there are quite a few add-ons for Firefox as well.
- 5 Free Tools for Recording Google+ Hangouts – hangouts are basically group video chats you may want to record for later. There are already a few tools that allow that. Here’s an overview.
Misc. Google+ Tools
- Share From Anywhere Google+ Bookmarklet – this unofficial bookmarklet uses a mobile shortcut to submit any page to Google+.
- Google+ for Mac – this is allegedly the only available Google+ for Mac solution.
- Move Your Photos – An easy way to move your Facebook Albums to Picasa – to show images in your Google Profile on Google+, you might want to move them from Facebook first. Facebook tends to block such apps, so be quick.
- Google Plus Nick – this is one of the first and most popular short URLs for the clumsy and cryptic Google Profile number.
- Google+ Apps & Icons – these are free icons for programmers and webmasters to use.
Do you already use these or other Google+ tools? Do you like them? Do they work? Do you know better ones than those I have mentioned? Please add your comments and suggestions below in the comment section!
* CC image by Toby Bochan.
SEO 2.0 living and working in Germany as a blog & SEO consultant. I'm blogging in English for SEO blogs around the world. My real name is Tadeusz Szewczyk but my friends who don't speak Polish - my mother tongue - call me Tad Chef or onreact.
Extensions are a decent start, then again things like extensions are not really what made Facebook popular… In fact, apps nearly killed in in 07/08. (not literally, but there was a huge uproar that could have led to its demise). I have my doubts about Google+ at the moment. I have a handful of friends on there, but I haven’t gotten a single notification in like a month. So I dunno how I should feel about that
Brian Johnson: Yeah, I’m not sure about Google+ and the tools either. At least we have plenty of tools now to fix the issues on the fly and to add features we expect. Personally I still use Twitter more often than G+ but Facebook is on #3 now.
Thanks for the mozilla tools for Google +, I added some of them to increase productivity. Thats one of my main pet peeves :)
I hope google + app would be added to Pokki :) We can already our Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts via Pokki although it is a beta version.
Thanks for all the great inputs. BTW, I would like to know what you think about the website: findpeopleonplus.com