Inside AdWords is promoting Google Friend Connect by recommending that you place it on your website for your pay per click advertising visitors. Bad idea.
No, let me rephrase that. Very bad idea.
Google Friend Connect is Google’s open source social platform. When you put social features like this on your landing page or website for your visitors, yeah, they might stay longer. But they might leave without buying anything too. And that’s why you don’t want this on your landing page.
Simply driving visitors to your home page is not a wise idea. You want to use PPC to drive targeted traffic to a specific landing page with something specific to sell. It could be a product, a service, a membership, or whatever. But you don’t want exit holes on your landing page. And Google Friend Connect is one big exit hole.
The way it works is like this: People sign up for an account (either on your website or on someone else’s) and on their profile they list their websites and social profiles. Whenever you have more than one social friend, all of their profiles appear on your website. All of your visitors can see them and visit each profile and click the links. Every link is a potential exit hole for your visitors. You don’t want them leaving your landing page before buying something. Duh.
I’m not saying Google Friend Connect isn’t a good service. It is. Just don’t put it on landing pages where you expect to close a sale.
