Some of the biggest company/brand accounts on Google+ have now — finally, some might say — been removed.
The Google Plus pages for Mashable, Ford and Sesame Streetare all gone. Our own Search Engine Land page has also been removed. Mashable was, according to SocialStatistics.com, the No. 4 most popular account on Google+ with more than 103,000 followers.
All of those accounts have been replaced by a 404 error message.
Read More of Matt McGees post after the jump
Google has been removing business/brand accounts for more than a week now, but some users were unhappy with the random nature of the process. Some accounts were zapped early on while others seemed to get special treatment, or at least were ignored, and continued to increase their following.
It’s been a rocky few weeks for companies and brands wanting to have a presence on Google+. Within a week of Plus’ launch, Google announced that business pages would be coming soon, but days later had to ask brands to stop making new accounts. Google eventually invited businesses to apply to be part of a test program and accepted applications through last Friday.
The most recent news about Google+ for businesses was this message last week from Google’s Christian Oestlien, who said that Google would be “selecting a diverse set of business partners for the test period” and notifying them this week. Here at Search Engine Land, we did get a notification that our Google Plus account has been suspended, but there’s no invitation to a test program.
Your profile is suspended
After reviewing your profile, we determined that some of the content (e.g. text, images, name) violates our Community Standards or our Names Policy. Please remember that we are currently limiting profiles to real people and will be launching a profile for businesses and other entities later this year.
If you believe that your profile has been suspended in error, or you have recently edited your profile to comply with our Community Standards or Names Policy please submit your profile for reconsideration. Your profile will be reviewed again and unblocked if it complies with our Community Standards.
We’ve reached out to Google for more information and will update this post if/when we have a reply.
- Google Removes Mashable, Sesame Street & Other Prominent Accounts From Google Plus
- Tips for journalists wanting to engage with 20m Google+ users
- Mashable rub a few people the wrong way with their terms-violating Google+ account
- Google Accelerates Google+ for Business Test Program
- Google+ Opens To Businesses
- Google + Isn’t for Brands – Yet
- Business Owners Face Google+ Dilemma: Google+ Team to Shut Down Business Profiles Until Roll Out Later This Year
