Why would Google+ send posts as 'messages' to people outside of your circles?
-
A day ago I uploaded a photo of a US Navy ship mooring at Bell Harbor marina, which is across from my office (near the conference center site of SMX Advanced Seattle). A rude comment was posted by someone from Germany accusing me of sending this to them personally, offended because he's anti-military: "Don't spam people pal." I blocked him.
So, since it was uploaded to my public stream and shared to my circles, I have no explanation as to how this could happen. If someone in my circles shared it to him, I suppose it could look like I sent it to him, but I haven't seen that happen before. Anyone else see behavior like this?
UPDATE: because this person was within one of the circles to whom I shared this photo, he received a notification that I'd shared it "directly" with him. See comment below.
-
Thanks for adding this information! I had wondered why people I hardly knew were sharing something "directly" with me.
-
As I hadn't had a response I neglected to add this update.
Within Google+, if you share to specific circles, anyone that you've added to that circle will receive the message "John Doe shared this directly with you."
I had shared the aforementioned waterfront photo to my "inbound marketers" circle, as almost all of them are were SMX Advanced attendees, and thus knew the adjacent Bell Harbor Marina by the conference center. The individual who whined that I was "spamming" him received a + notification that I shared this photo "directly" with him, although in reality it was to my circle.
It wasn't clear what had happened at first because I am not in his circles, though I had added him to the inbound marketers circle (he's definitely out now).
If you've set your settings up so that you'll receive no notifications from people you haven't added to circles, you won't see messages like this. It's interesting to note that if you send messages to people you've added to circles, they will see the message that it was shared directly with them. **I think this is a bad user experience in Google+, as it creates the impression that a message actually sent to a group/circle, was sent individually. **
The attached image shows a person who sent a message to her Social Media circle (of about 300 people), but looking at the verbiage "Shared a post directly with you," one might think it was a direct individual ping.
-
Hi Brian,
The popup where you choose who to share with when posting on Google+ has an option that says something like "email this post to X people not using Google+" ..it is usually checked by default on mine. Maybe this has something to do with it?
Sha
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should we add a weekly updated website blog (annotated re-postings) that mirrors our LinkedIn updates?.
We currently add original content to our website every couple of months in the form of long form articles we have guest authored for other reputable sites. We also maintain a LinkedIn company site with weekly updates in the form of annotated newsworthy re-postings. We are thinking of duplicating our LinkedIn update feed on our website as a blog in order to build more traffic and improve SEO. Hopefully the additional frequency of site updates will also help. Again, this additional content will be largely re purposed, with the exception of our value-added annotations. Good idea? Waste of time? Suggested tweaks? Should we link back to the original content source, no-follow, or no link?
Social Media | | Lysarden0 -
Why am I seeing so many referalls to my root domain from Facebook in Google Analytics?
When we look at referalls from Facebook in Google Analytics, more than 50% (and sometimes upwards of 80%) of the traffic we're getting is listed as landing on our root domain. The thing is, we don't have any direct links TO our root domain on our Facebook page. So is this legitimate traffic, and how are they getting to our page if we have no links to it? We do post links to stories, videos, etc, but those are to the individual pages, not to our root domain. When I look at those pages that we link to, they do have traffic numbers, but nothing compared to the root domain. Any thoughts would be helpful. Thanks.
Social Media | | TexAgs0 -
Fetch for Google
Hi there! A short question from Holland: My developers made a mistake with a template on a subpage in Wordpress. When Google crawled my site again, Google found an empty page. The same day we loosed our #1 position on the main keyword and now we are on position #6. We restored the page the same day and asked Google to recrawl the page again (fetch for Google). But 48 hours later nothing changed. When I look in the cache date' the page still has the old date, while my competition has a newer cache date. We send some traffic to the page and did some facebook post on this page. Does anybody knows how to kickstart this page again?
Social Media | | remkoallertz0 -
I am wondering if there is a way to recapture the manager's position on Facebook Pages.
If this is a duplicate I apologize. Our employee had a client's business page tied to their personal page. This person is now a former employee and closed their personal page. That leaves us without full capacity on this client's Business page. Is there anything I can do? Or is the only way to reclaim manager status to start a new page?
Social Media | | HogWild0 -
My Belgian Facebook page is not indexed in Google
Dear all, I have several Facebook pages and are all indexed except the Belgian Facebook Page. How is that possible? Thanks!
Social Media | | HMK-NL0 -
Post Privacy Settings
Facebook says roughly 12% of your friends see your posts. Facebook has privacy settings. Naturally the setting is "public." If you change the setting from public to "Selected List," do you think more of that group of people will get the message? If your public setting has 1,000 friends, and the list contains 200 people, do you think it will generate the post to 12% of the list? Is there anyone interested in testing this? It would make a GREAT blog post! I would certainly read it. If you have any tips to help hit more people on Facebook let me hear it please!
Social Media | | JML11790 -
Are Facebook posts indexed?
Can using keywords and target phrases in posts on my Facebook fanpage help my SEO strategy, or does Google not crawl those pages so it doesn't matter in terms of SEO? If it can help, can you please provide an example? Thanks!
Social Media | | theLotter0 -
Ways to get the most out of your content/blog posts?
I've been working on posting more content on my blog and now I need a workflow to help me get more exposure on my posts. Currently this is what I'm doing: 1- Write Post 2- Add it to my favorites in Stumbled Upon 3- Post it to Facebook 4- Pin it in Pinterest I would love some more ideas. My goal at this point is to gain greater web exposure. I would love to be they type of blog others actively follow.
Social Media | | continuumphoto0