For those of you who regularly manage Google channels for your business, brand or clients, you will know how convoluted the linking between those channels them can be.
The biggest bone of contention for me has always been the ability (or recent lack thereof) to switch to your Brand Account for Google+. Previously it was achievable through choosing the 'Brand Account' option after clicking the profile icon in the top-right of the browser window. However, about 6 months ago I noticed that this no longer appeared.
At the time I shrugged it off as some quirk with Google accounts, and the fact that I had logged in and out of so many different ones. Days turned to week, weeks to months and here we are in May 2018 with still no Brand Account option to select.
Now before those with active Google+ Brand Accounts start to panic, don't worry too much. You can still access them - just not as easily as you could in the past. However, those who have not posted from their Brand Account in a while may just find that they no longer have a Google+ profile. And guess what?
THERE IS NOW NO WAY OF ENABLING A GOOGLE+ PAGE FOR AN EXISTING BRAND ACCOUNT.
Has Google announced this? No.
Do all the online Google instructions lead you down a blind alley? Yes.
Why is this happening? Because it looks like Google want to centralise everything into the Google My Business area.
Previously when you set up your business on Google My Business it would automatically create a Google+ page for your brand too. Then the divorce happened.
Whereas the two were pretty much co-managed previously and accessible through the same area, in the past year or so they became completely divorced and separate entities. Your Google+ posts used to appear in the right-hand panel of the SERP for Google My Business, but not any more. Then I noticed something interesting was introduced into Google My Business.
The ability to post an update from Google My Business was a new feature brought in. "But why have this when you can do exactly the same on Google+?" I thought to myself. Answer - because it looks like Google+ for brands will be made obsolete.
It would help a great deal (and save me the hours I've spend trying to figure out what's going on) if Google just announced this was the direction they were heading in. Plus, the fact that all of their online documentation and instructions for enabling a Google+ page for an existing Brand Account lead you nowhere does not help matters.
As a caveat, you can still set up a Google+ brand account (although digging for hidden treasure is easier than finding out how to do this). You just can't set one up for an existing Brand Account.