Google+, G+ and Google Plus

Picking a name is very difficult.  It can actually kill a product at times.  The reason a bad name can kill a product is that it is hard to spell, hard to find, confusing or so common that you cannot stand out.

Google Plus has a huge advantage because it is Google.  I love a made up name that is simple and when I named my lead generation product Buzzoodle, it was with the similar idea in mind.

Of course, I also had to buy domains for all the ways people would misspell it, such as buzzdoodle and buzznoodle.

Google Plus is suffering a bit from some confusion.  Google seems to prefer Google+, but the search engine itself sees the + as “and” and not as part of the name.  That means for search, calling Google+ Google+ is less effective than calling it Google Plus.

I wonder if they had a meeting where this was discussed – seems a big deal, since they are Google and it is not well named for Google search.  Did someone finally yell, “Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead”?  Probably.

I am not suggesting it is a bad name.  The fall out of how it will be referred to is interesting.  Many people shorten it to G+ when chatting.  If you are writing for search, you will write Google Plus and if you are formally writing about it in an article for a serious publication, you will have to refer to it as Google+.

Will this ambiguity hurt it?

Well, it took forever for me to find the Google+ app in iTunes because it did not appear in their search.  If you searched on Google Huddle supposedly it showed up.  Now that is intuitive.  And this is only one example of what will probably be a lot of problems.

The good news for Google is that the combination of Brand and Buzz will probably overcome these obstacles, but if you are a less well known company, do not try a + for yourself.