Play fair, Google+. :)

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Jim Munro: Play fair, Google+. :)
  
  I received this message for one of the business pages for our shopsafe.com site:
  
  "Google+ URL - Your page is eligible for a custom URL - Get URL"
  
  However, to accept the URL, I am asked to add extra letters to +ShopSafe.
  
  This is the message: ;
  
  "Add a few extra letters or numbers to this URL to get one that is unique for your page."
  
  No way.
  
  I already know a word that is unique to our site page - +ShopSafe ;:)
  
  If it is good enough for Google+ to give google.com/+google to google.com, I think it is only fair that Google+ should offer +ShopSafe to shopsafe.com because we have owned our .com domain three years longer than Google has.
  
  What is +ShopSafe being reserved for? Could it be the Bank of America's credit card service, also called "shopsafe"?
  
  The Bank of America did not start using the term until 2002 and I am sure that if they thought they had any rights at all to the term "shopsafe" they would have attempted to exercise them by now. ;
  
  We have kept the term "ShopSafe" continuously registered as a Business Name in Australia since 1996. We are +ShopSafe and continuous  ;owners of the shopsafe.com domain as well as a score of other "ShopSafe" cctlds and tlds. I think we should rightly be entitled to the URL google.com/+ShopSafe.
  
  This is the procedure generally employed for choosing URLs for other .com domains. If the .com is stripped off to choose a vanity URL for most sites with a .com, why not for one of the original sites of the internet?
  
  Also, why is google.com/+GoogleMaps being applied to maps.google.com while other subdomains are offered nothing?
  
  ...and why has google.com/+virginballoons been bestowed on virginballoonflights.co.uk while other .co.uk sites must add couk to the end of their brand?
  
  I realise it must be tough for ;+Vic Gundotra ;and the rest of the G+ team. It would be thankless task to devise a plan that pleases everybody but ownership of the .com should be the over-riding criteria because it is a simple plan that can be efficiently implemented and policed. All other branding issues hinge on ownership of the .com.
  
  I would like to know your opinion. Do you think we deserve google.com/+ShopSafe more than all other parties since we have always owned shopsafe.com?
• 
  Matt Forman: 1000% agree with you +Jim Munro. I've got exactly the same problem with +Traffika. No one else has it, it's unique to us and even worse we own the registered trademark yet the big G still thinks it knows best.
  
  I know it's still early days and things might change but I don't understand how Google could take such a simple thing and make it so complicated. Why can't we choose, or at least communicate to Google they have it wrong?
  
  IMHO Google needs to be winning the hearts and minds of all users and wooing people to fall in love with the G+ brand... Stupid things like this are frustrating to their users and for the average business owner / marketer that is still to switch on to the value in G+ they will see it as all too hard and elitist and just stay on Facebook where it's easier to do business and they are making it easier to fall in love with their brand.
  
  Sorry I know I didn't give you any answers Jim but wanted to let you know you are not alone :).
• 
  Jim Munro: You gave me a lot, Matt, thank you. Now I just need to enlist another 455M people who think like you. :)
• 
  Rick Bucich: +Jim Munro ;Been seeing other similar cases/complaints in the forum where the legitimate brand term, even longer ones than yours are not being accepted seemingly because they are made up of combined words that each individually are not brandable. Basically, brands that resemble head term phrases need to be amended with some distinctive quality to make it more unique. ;
  
  Not saying it seems fair but probably a preventative measure to avoid the manual/legal messiness of having to rescind a vanity url after the fact.
• 
  Jim Munro: I understand Rick, +Andy Wigglesworth ;was just telling me about designbyhuman.com an hour or two ago.
  
  I don't know why they would think they would have to rescind because of a legal intervention because a .com domain is immensely more important to brand than a vanity url and the processes involved to restore a domain to it's rightful owner are reasonably fast and simple with trivial costs compared with the imagined cost of suing Google.
  
  Who would risk it?
  
  It should be safe to assume that if anyone has a right to a domain term, they would have exercised their rights previously. If a domain has been owned for 16/17 years, it seems rational to assume that it is theirs. :) ;
• 
  Andy Wigglesworth: The guy I freelance for has designbyhuman.com (not new, been around since 2003) and the vanity URL chosen for it is +designbyhuman but it requires extra characters like Jims.
• 
  Chris Sutton: +Jim Munro Hi Jim, likewise, I've had chrissutton.com for 10 years or more but still had to append additional characters.
• 
  Andy Wigglesworth: +Chris Sutton ;if you don't mind me asking what did you add to yours?
• 
  Chris Sutton: +Andy Wigglesworth Oz, which wasn't too much of a problem, would have preferred the name only though
• 
  Andy Wigglesworth: Cheers +Chris Sutton ;I might have to have a think what to do!...
• 
  Jim Munro: +Chris Sutton ;I am sorry to hear that you have been inconvenienced by this too. Was it offered via your personal profile or on your domain's business page?
• 
  Chris Sutton: +Jim Munro ; The business URL was offered straightaway, and there was no chance we'd get t he plain +sitesuite URL, but we got offered SiteSuiteAu which we didn't mind too much, and I only got offered the personal URL today
• 
  Jim Munro: SiteSuiteAu for sitesuite.com.au seems to be fairly offered within their policy, Chris, as we received +ShopSafeAu for shopsafe.com.au .
  
  That is fair enough but I did also receive +Jim Munro ;a little while ago even though there are a few Jim Munro's about.
  
  As far as I can see you have more activity than the sample of Chris Suttons I was able to check so you should arguably have qualified for that but you definitely should get it for the .com domain.
  
  They are giving it to most .com domains so I think it should be a hard and fast rule across all .com domains.
• 
  Reginald Chan: Totally agree on that. Some brands are already well known and G isn't giving that to them. Maybe they need to personally verify the matter? Just my 2 cents!
• 
  Rob Watts: It does seem a little like one rule for the big brands and another for the not so big brands. Good catch on the virgin thing, hardly fair play there Google. I didn't really want to have that silly couk extension either, but I'm supposedly stuck with it. Seems like a poor implementation really, If they HAD to get regional with it then at the very least, they could have perhaps stripped out the co and added a hyphen or some other separator. ;
  
  Good luck Jim!
• 
  Jim Munro: Thank you, Rob, but I've got a feeling I'll need all of the luck you can send me plus more. :)
• 
  Masatake Wasa: I'm seeing the same story over and over in the Google+ Help community, and a lot of trademarked names (registered as such, and there are no other instances of the name being used elsewhere) are being required to add something to the offered URI: I really wish that they have some clarity, but at the moment, the only thing I can suggest is that you submit a feedback.
• 
  Jim Munro: Thanks mate but I will use G+ to submit my feedback because it seems to me that +Vic Gundotra ;is not hearing about what's happening out here.
  
  I couldn't care less whether we get what we are entitled to or not personally but I won't allow someone else to have what is ours.
• 
  Jim Munro: I weakened and pressed shift @ :)
• 
  Jim Munro: Interesting. I have two pages for shopsafe.com (long story). One of them is still offering the GetURL at the top of the page when opened but the page I submitted the feedback request on is no longer displaying it.
  
  Both have a GetURL link in the "Links" section of the page but they are still asking to "add a couple of letters"
• 
  W.E. Jonk: Update LOL: https://plus.google.com/113511279752012786991/posts/UME1ujAHjCR