Google is getting ready for businesses to start jumping on Google+, the social network competing with Facebook. Google+ started to roll out Google+ Pages to help companies create a presence on the social network platform for connecting with their users locally and worldwide.

Google+ engineers appear to be gradually rolling out the new Pages. Google released its much anticipated social network in June of 2011 for individuals and opens it now up for organizations.

“Right now, we’re very much focused on optimizing for the consumer experience,” said Christian Oestlien, a developer on the Google+ project, in a video blog posted last summer. “But we have a great team of engineers building a similarly optimized business experience for Google+. We are very excited about it and hope to roll it out later this year.”

At the time, Google also put out a call for businesses that would be interested in acting as a test group so Google engineers could see how users want to interact with companies.

A matter of days after that post, Google said it was accelerating its efforts to develop a business version of Google+. The company also noted that “tens of thousands” of businesses had signed up to be part of their test group.

Analysts praised Google’s move.

Many businesses and organizations use Facebook for marketing purposes, but the social network isn’t optimized for them yet. Monday’s announcement could give Google+ an advantage in the lucrative enterprise market.