• About Us
  • Contributors
  • Guides
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Write for The SEM Post
  • Submit a tip or contact us!
  • Newsletters

The SEM Post

Latest News About SEO, SEM, PPC & Search Engines

  • Google
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Bing
  • Pay Per Click
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • State of the Industry
You are here: Home / Google / Google+ Now Allows Nicknames Instead of Real Names

Google+ Now Allows Nicknames Instead of Real Names

July 16, 2014 at 4:20 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS

google plus header

One of the major concerns people have had with Google+ is that users could not use a nickname or a fake name as their name on the social media platform.  Instead, Google+ had a strict policy that only real names were allowed.  Google+ has now made the change that opens up the platform to names other than a person’s real name.

“We know you’ve been calling for this change for a while,” the company wrote on a Google+ post about the change. “We know that our names policy has been unclear, and this has led to some unnecessarily difficult experiences for some of our users. For this we apologize, and we hope that today’s change is a step toward making Google+ the welcoming and inclusive place that we want it to be.”

Changing the name in Google+ will also change it across the entire Google+ account.  So this could have an impact with accounts such as Google AdWords and Google AdSense that are legally tied to financial information for payments to and from Google.

Due to Google’s strict “real names only” policy, there were privacy issues raised, such as teenagers whose parents did not want them using their real name, as well as those who wished to be on Google+ under a well known persona instead of their real name.  And there were incidents of transgendered people outted inadvertently through Google+.

They had loosened up the policy more recently, especially for YouTube.  “Over the years, as Google+ grew and its community became established, we steadily opened up this policy, from allowing +Page owners to use any name of their choosing to letting YouTube users bring their usernames into Google+” says Google.

Now, anyone can change their name.  However, one negative aspect of allowing fake names is that many feel it will increase the number of trolls active on the platform because it is now much easier to hide behind fake names, although it wasn’t impossible to do so before.

This is a welcome change, although it remains to be seen if this change will increase popularity or usage amongst social media users, in a world where Facebook and Twitter reign supreme.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Google Tagged With: Google, personas, social media

Sign up for our newsletter


Trackbacks

  1. Top SEM Picks – Week in Review July 20, 2014 - The SEM Post says:
    July 20, 2014 at 11:39 pm

    […] Google+ Allows Nicknames Instead of Real Names […]

  2. Google Splitting Google+ Into Photos & Streams - The SEM Post says:
    March 2, 2015 at 6:49 am

    […] a rival to Facebook. It was way to start and they runs many hiccups along the way, including the real name policy and complaints that it wasn’t quite as personal as […]

Founder & Editor

Jennifer Slegg (2052)

Sign up for our daily news recap & weekly newsletter.


Follow us online

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Latest News

2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates

We finally have the first Google Quality Rater Guidelines update of 2022, and like usual, it is … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites
  • Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials

Categories

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Branding
  • Browsers
  • Chrome
  • Content Marketing
  • Design
  • Domains
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Firefox
  • Foursquare
  • Google
    • Analytics
    • Google RankBrain
    • Quality Rater's Guidelines
  • History of Search
  • Industry Spotlight
  • Instagram
  • Internet Explorer
  • Links
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Native Advertising
  • Other Search Engines
  • Pay Per Click
  • Pinterest
  • Publishers
  • Security
  • SEO
  • Snapchat
  • Social Media
  • State of the Industry
  • The SEM Post
  • Tools
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • User Experience
  • Video Marketing
  • Week in Review
  • Whitepapers
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
February 2023
MTWTFSS
« Aug  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728 

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in