Is Google+ ready for “Prime Time?” The Marion Group isn’t so sure.

After extensive research into the social media platform, and its addition of Google+ company pages, we’re not quite ready to adopt what appears to be a somewhat cumbersome and “glitchy” administrator and user experience. That’s not to say we’re ignoring it completely. It still has profound effects on Google’s overall search results.

Late last year, Google announced it would be changing its search algorithm to give Google+ results priority in search results for users who have created their own Google+ accounts. Basically the search would determine relevancy of results based on your interests, and those shared by people in your “circles.”

In theory, if you have a Google+ account and you search for “Sofa Upholstery,” the results pickup whether your friends on the network have mentioned anything about sofa upholstery on their accounts and return those relevant results first. While this may sound like a great way to propagate a brand and narrow the 6 degrees of separation–say– down to four or five, the process of administering company pages has not reached the point of full reliability or ease of use.

As an example, only one Google+ account can be associated with a company page. If you want multiple people to post to the company page, you have to provide them with your own Google username and password, or create a new account specific to your company. That may sound easy enough, but handing out a username and password to everyone who wants to update content leaves you open to malicious attacks and a vast lack of control over security.

Therefore, until Google updates their current Google+ functionality and includes what we believe are crucial administration options, we suggest avoiding the social media platform for now.

The Marion Group will follow Google’s progress, as well as continue to develop a social media marketing strategy that can be applied to Google+ in the future.