Michael Mothner’s article on Inc.com, “6 Things You Don’t Know About Google+,” paints a clear picture of the search giant’s intentions when it created Google+and how it still has a lot of potential for your business.

1. It’s not a social network: While its layout looks very similar to Facebook, it’s not trying to connect people the same way. Instead, Google+ was engineered to introduce the +1 button.

“Every time that +1 Button is clicked, it feeds Google’s advertising engine, allowing them to match more targeted ads to you and everyone connected with you through your Google account,” says Mothner. “More data means better targeting, which in turn makes Google more money.”

2. Adding the +1 button will boost your SEO rankings: “Google says that adding +1 button integration to your web site won’t directly affect your rankings, but that is misleading. It will absolutely affect your SEO rankings, albeit indirectly,” says Mothner.

“Here’s how: Mike clicks a +1 button, essentially indicating a ‘social endorsement’ of a particular product or site. Later, Jim, who is a Gmail contact of Mike’s, does a search and that site shows up, it shows up with a picture of Mike under that listing and his ‘endorsement’ of the search result.”

The more people in your Google+ network, or your “+1 ecosystem” as Mothner calls it, means you’ll have more positive rankings and more visibility.

3. Active Google+ users dominate search results: Even if you don’t use Google+ very often, chances are that you use Google multiple times every day.

“That means the users or companies that I did add to my Circles have had a major…impact on my search results ever since Google introduced ‘Search + Your World,’” says Mothner. “In a sense, it is the very mediocrity of Google+ adoption that creates the opportunity for your business to get a payoff from using it.”

4. Google+ is great for reputation management: Businesses want to control their reputation, but that’s becoming more difficult with so many being able to post negative reviews without giving you the chance to rectify the negative experience. While Google+ doesn’t allow you to remove those negative posts, it does give you the opportunity to force them out of top spots.

“If you have a comprehensive Google+ listing, you can almost certainly get a top spot under searches for your company. That’s something that you control, is positive, and will push those pesky negative posts farther down the search results page,” says Mothner.

5. Google+ gives you more real estate: This real estate being posting lengths. Other social media sites limit the length of posts, but not Google+.

“Google+, however, provides a venue that’s more like a blog; it’s more common there to see full-length posts,” says Mothner. “And the more content you feed Google, the more it can index and produce in search results – helping your visibility, traffic, and SEO.”

6. Google+ isn’t about to disappear: This was a thought on the forefront because many viewed Google+ as a lackluster competitor to Facebook. However, it’s here to stay.

According to Mothner, “Google has invested heavily in Google+, integrated it across all of its properties, and set the tone for this decade to be the Decade of Social – a battle that it is not going to bow out of any time soon.”

To read the entire article on Inc.com, please click here.