In the first week of November 2011 Google+, Google’s latest venture into the social network world, finally launched its business pages. The question now is how will they affect the field of online marketing? The launch of these pages was eagerly anticipated, but there have been some teething problems with businesses reporting difficulties in signing up for their slot. However it is early days yet and these appear to be simply teething problems perhaps because of the numbers of businesses anxious to get onto this social media platform at last.At ad tech, New York, during the first week of the launch, Google’s Christian Oestlien outlined ways in which Google+ pages will revolutionize the world of online marketing. He spoke of the “fragmented marketing” which takes place now and suggested that this could be a thing of the past as with the pages online marketers can connect with all users of Google+ as well as their own customers, directly. All +1s can now be tied together across a business site, search results and search advertisements on your Google Page. The ability to do this should directly impact on your SEO and increase your position in the Search Engine Rankings Pages.Google’s Circles can strengthen the recommendations that have been made about your product or services, which have in the past, suggested Mr. Oestlien, lacked “staying power.” Circles, he went on to say can provide brands with a means of delivering the right message to the right people. In other words, Circles will be a way of engaging with your customers and targeting cluster groups, delivering messages which those clusters are likely to want to know about. In other words Circles can help immensely with targeted advertising and the “one-size-fits-all” kind of ad will slowly become a thing of the past, not part of Google +’s bright future; impersonal messages will stop.The Ripples feature allows businesses to track the social life of an ad. You can search #pagetips on Google+ and get tips from other people about various aspects of online marketing and social media advertising and it also has a Google+ your business which can be added to your Circles.The key to Google+ and its opportunities for online marketers seems to me to be that businesses can have direct communication with the customers. All you have to do is take negative comments well and not respond to them angrily. There will be some of these as you can’t please all of the people all of the time. You can click on the ‘Start a Hangout’ button on the right of your home page to engage with fans but you need to think who should host the hangout at your end. You need someone with a great personality, a good sense of humor and one who doesn’t take negative comments personally. That person should be dynamic and a good people-person, able to communicate well with all types of people. This person will be your direct link to your “fans” and detractors, of course.Mr. Oestlien said that you could, in your Circles page, under a creative post say something to the effect of: – ” ‘we want to make sure we get the right messages to our fans, so +1 the comments below to let us know what circles you want to be part of,” in order for you to gauge what people are interested in.There has been a lot of talk about having direct communication with customers and clients and the major positive thing about Google+ Pages, in my opinion, is that it gives businesses a way to engage directly with consumers.