More than a mere Facebook wannabe, Google+ shows real potential for small businessesPeople like to joke that Google+ is a pale imitation of Facebook. But Google didn’t debut the network in 2011 just to give users a place to post cat pics and birthday greetings. It created Google+, which it calls a “social layer and identity service,” to keep closer tabs on Google users’ online activities. By all reports, it’s doing a bang-up job. As it tracks and collects data, it dictates what ads we see and how results rank in our searches.This Big Brother act means real power and influence when it comes to shaping how consumers spend, at the search results level. And that influence is growing. According to big data firm Statista, 343 million people were active on Google+ as of November 2014, making it the second-biggest social network, behind Facebook, in the Western world (with 645 million