Google Kills Google+ Direct Connect Feature

Remember when you could find Google+ pages simply by typing the plus symbol ('+') in front of the business name? For example, typing +Search Engine Watch would bring you directly to SEW's Google+ page.

Oh, did you not know that wasn't available anymore? Neither did we. In fact, Google+ Direct Connect quietly slipped away, Search Engine Land reported.

Here's a reminder of how that functionality worked, from Google:

When it launched in 2011, Direct Connect linked search and social in a whole new way. It isn't clear when it went missing, officially.

A Google spokesperson told SEL: 'That particular feature is not a focus for us moving forward.'

It also appears the Google+ help files associated with it are gone. But, I found an article as early as fall of last year giving a tutorial on it - so it seems to have gone away sometime in the last 7 months.

If indeed it did quietly slip away without much chatter, perhaps the adoption rate was low. Or, maybe Google figured there are other, better ways to access Google+ pages in the results, like in the Knowledge Graph results.

Curious, when's the last time you used the '+' command to find Google+ pages? Are you disappointed it's going away?

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