It was Google’s answer to Facebook. Three years ago, the California giant launched the new social network - Google+. The aim: to counter the rising tide of internet users flocking to Facebook.
That hasn't happened, not matter how hard the search giant has tried. Now the question is: Is Google is giving up the ghost on its grand plan?
Speculation has been fueled by the resignation of longtime Google+ boss Vic Gundotra two months ago, but the company says it has no plans to abandon the service.
Dave Besbris is taking over from Vic Gundotra as Vice-President of Google+ (Click Image To Enlarge)
David Besbris, a Google engineering vice president who took over Google+ when Gundotra left, said.
"Reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated."
In his first public comments to a reporter since Gundotra's departure, Besbris said in an emailed statement to the San Jose Mercury News that Google+ had "hundreds of millions of users (and growing)."
He vowed:
"We're committed to building a product that people absolutely love. So no, Google isn't giving up on Google+."
Experts say Google+ has served a valuable purpose for the giant Internet company as the centerpiece of a broader strategy to create a unified profile for each person who uses any of Google's online products -- the better to deliver more targeted advertising, which is highly profitable for Google.
Google did not make Besbris or Bradley Horowitz, a longtime Google+ vice president, available for a formal interview.
Vic Gundotra, former VP of Google+, resigned to pursue other interests (Click Image To Enlarge)
And Gundotra hasn't publicly explained his departure from the company, though by all accounts he left on good terms.
In his statement, relayed through a spokesperson, Besbris described Google+ as both a social network and "a social fabric on and off Google."
The latter refered to Google's efforts to make Google+ serve as the identity that people use for signing into other Google services and independent apps, as well as to comment on YouTube and endorse or share things they find on other websites while signed in to Google+.
Google said this helped the company provide a "more consistent experience" to users -- for example, by anticipating that you want directions on Google Maps for the restaurant you found with Google's search engine, then letting you review the meal on Google+.
Analysts say it also allowed the company to compile a more complete picture of a user's habits or interests, by recognizing them on a variety of services and devices, which in turn helps Google show more relevant advertising.
The biggest part of Google's $60bn in annual revenue comes from ads tied to Internet searches, but it's increasingly selling other types of online ads, too.
Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott told the Mercury News said.
"The more they can combine what they know about people, across all different channels, the better understanding they have for each user, and that's vital to their ad sales efforts."
When combined, he claimed that Google's broad range of apps and services may provide more information than Facebook can glean from its users' likes and updates.
Besbris actually led the engineering team that built Google+. He posts regularly on the social network, sharing photos he's taken of flowers and other things that catch his eye.
In his statement, he offered few specifics about his goals for the service, but said.
"I want to build on our momentum, build a product that people absolutely love, and make Google+ the place for meaningful conversations online."
But how many people are having those conversations?
The Mercury News said.
“It's never come close to Facebook's popularity as a digital town square.”
Chris Abraham, a digital marketing consultant, said
"Once in a while, I meet people who are like, 'Google+ is my life.' But I think it's mostly a small group."
All a far cry from this sort of reporting three years ago:
“ Google+, the challenger to Facebook launched at then end of June, is growing at an astonishing 625,000 users per day and could could reach 400 million users by the end of 2012, it was reported yesterday. That would still be only half the 800 million users Facebook claims worldwide. But it is still a remarkable turnaround for a network which was not getting rave reviews a month ago. "
The "400 million" prediction came from Paul Allen, Ancestry.com founder and "unofficial statistician" for Google+.
Writing on his blog then - which appeared on Google - Allen said Google+ was adding new users "at a very rapid pace."
Allen said that if new signups continue at just 625k daily then Google+ will reach 100 million users on 25 Feb and 200 million users on 3 August.
Allen said.
“At that rate they will finish 2012 with 293 million users.”
Today Abraham said he gets little response when he shares items on Google+. He believes many users simply repost items they've already put on Facebook or other sites.
Google hasn't released any user statistics since October, when it said 540 million people worldwide used Google+ credentials to sign in or post comments on any Google service in the previous month.
A smaller group of 300 million visited "the stream" of Google+ itself, but even that figure counts people who merely click the red Google+ symbol that can appear on-screen while using other Google services. It’s not impressive beside the 1.28 billion monthly active users who use Facebook worldwide.
Nielsen researchers estimate that 27.4 million U.S. residents visited the Google+ website in April 2014. By comparison, Nielsen estimates for Facebook there were four times that: 117.8 million U.S. users on the website and 116.7 million on the mobile app, also with some overlap.
Click Image To Enlarge
Google+ always faced an uphill battle against the more established Facebook, said Charlene Li, a social media expert and founder of research firm Altimeter Group.
"If your friends are not on Google+, and likely they're not, you're going to go on Facebook."
The number of Google+ active users is actually roughly the same size as those on another service -- Twitter, according to both Nielsen and Forrester Research.
And while there's no direct advertising on Google+, said Forrester's Elliott, companies that maintain a page on Google+ have more online interactions with their followers than they do on Twitter.
He said.
"Google+ is actually a useful social site for companies to promote their brands, but even Google doesn't seem to understand the value of Google+ as a standalone property."
Altimeter's Li said the future may lie elsewhere. While Google already operates a variety of apps and services, she noted that Facebook is building and buying a stable of stand-alone apps that let people directly share pictures, news items and messages with their friends -- all without visiting Facebook's main site.
She said.
"The idea of a destination site, like the Google+ page, is getting kind of antiquated."
Facebook says it has 1.28 billion monthly active users around the world. By comparison, Google+ says 540 million use Google+ credentials for a variety of services, with 300 million users "in the stream." Twitter reports 255 million active users.
At the time of Gundotra's resignation, TechCrunch said Google was gutting the division. According to the website
"Google+ isn't dead dead. They aren't dead bolting the doors and turning off the servers."
Now the service will reportedly continue to serve as a "backbone" of other Google services.
Tech crunch said,
“Whatever happens to the service, don't expect it to become anything more than it is at the moment."
According to the report, Google is gutting its Google+ team by moving its Hangouts (the video chatting portion of Google+) and Photos (image storage and editing) teams to the Android division.
The legal website Findlaw, reporting on Google+ asked;
“Were you Google+'s only user? Tell us about it on Facebook, since, ya know, that's where everyone else is.”
COMMENTARY: Without a doubt there are millions of people who use and value the social network, which turned three on June 28. There’s a vibrant community of photographers; there are Hangout on Air true believers; there are marketers who swear it’s the best social network for engaging with customers.
And despite Walking Dead speculation driven by the unexpected resignation of longtime Google+ boss Vic Gundotra in April, two Google executives insisted this week that it won’t go out with a whimper.
But the fact is that by one important measure — referral traffic — Google+ is unusually quiet. Some might say eerily so.
As one Google+ commenter put it,
“We seem to know that G+ is no ghost town. It is more of a social referral graveyard.”
It’s a bit of a puzzle, really. Why don’t more people click through from Google+ to publishers’ content? It’s an important question, one for which we don’t have a definitive answer.
Perhaps Google+ users are content with the content on the network and don’t see the need to exit. Perhaps it’s more of a platform for conversation than consumption of news and entertainment links. Perhaps there aren’t enough loyal Google+ users spending enough time on the network to move the needle.
Whatever the reasons, publishers are apt to start pulling away from Google+ at some point if there isn’t improvement. There are other motives, of course, for publishers to use the network: engagement with fans, perceived search benefits and the ease of live video production with Hangouts on Air. But referral traffic is still publishers’ top metric for measuring success. Without it in significant numbers, it’s harder to make the case that social efforts are paying off.
Facebook Is The Referral King
Any discussion on social referral traffic has to start with Facebook. Publishing strategies — and click-bait empires — rise and fall depending on the vagaries of the Facebook News Feed algorithm. The dominant social network generates more referral views than all the rest combined.
It’s easy to find the evidence. Social sharing platform provider Shareaholic, in its most recent comparison of social media referral traffic, reported that Facebook’s share to the 300,000 websites in its network was 21.25% in the first quarter. By comparison, Google+ checked in with a meager 0.08%. Pinterest was at 7.1% and Twitter 1.14%. According to Shareaholic, Google+ referral traffic is growing, but very slowly.
Click Image To Enlarge
Shareaholic’s data is supported wherever you turn. Marketing Land asked online marketing and audience development firm Define Media Group to pull year-to-date numbers from a sample of its clients, major U.S. news and entertainment publishers, and found similar results.
Only two of 22 sites generated more than 1% of their social referrals from Google+, a beauty site (1.68%, compared to 45.77% from Facebook and 12.98% from Twitter), and a tech news site (1.16%, compared to 60.2% from Facebook and 16.3% from Twitter). The overwhelming majority of the rest showed Google+ referral traffic of less than half a percent.
Mobile results are even worse. Mobile platform provider Onswipe reported this month that Google+’s referral traffic on its network was 0.046%, 10 times less than social bookmarking site Fark. Facebook’s share was 71.3%; Twitter’s 16.1%.
Bottom Line: Google+ Referrals Suck
When you look at individual stories, it’s the same story. Ars Technica reviews editor Ron Amadeo explained on a Google+ post in April:
“Everyone who writes stuff on the internet has access to some kind of extremely-detailed traffic analytics system. It’s very easy for them to see post traffic from G+, Facebook, and Twitter, and the bottom line is, referrals from Google+ suck.”
Amadeo, who wrote the post to explain why tech journalists have been using the ghost-town metaphor, shared social referral figures from two Ars Technica posts:
- On the Heartbleed bug: Twitter 49%, Facebook 41%, Google+ 5%
- On video game sales data: Facebook 63%, Twitter 28%, StumbleUpon 7%, Google+ 1%.
He wrote.
“StumbleUpon drove x7 times more traffic than Google+, GHOST TOWN.”
There are exceptions. Publishers with audiences that dovetail with Google+’s audience — Android Authority, for instance — do draw significant traffic from the network. Most articles on Android Authority show a Google+ advantage on share buttons similar to this:
Publishers Are Not Dumping Google+
Given the anemic results, you might expect publishers to start backing away from Google+, perhaps by dumping the +1 buttons that sit next to Facebook Like and Twitter buttons on article pages like the examples above. But there’s no evidence of that.
Adam Sherk, vice president of SEO and social media at Define Media Group, said.
“The overall trend is still to add the Google+ button. It’s become much more of a standard in the last couple of years, and we haven’t seen many publishers take it away yet. There is still a lot of questioning as to whether or not it is worthwhile. But in the end most do it, primarily in the hopes of gaining some search-related benefits.”
Those search benefits are difficult to quantify, because Google has reversed itself and doesn’t use social signals from Google+ (or other social networks) to boost search rankings. And some of the perceived advantages of being active on the network also evaporated this week, when Google announced it was dropping display of Google+ profile pictures and Circle counts in search results.
So the signals are definitely mixed as Google+ enters its third year. On one hand you have CEO Larry Page’s insisting that Google is still bullish about Google+ —
“We’re super excited about it.”
On the other, Page said that the same day Google+ got only a passing mention during the Google I/O keynote address, making it clear that Google is less excited about promoting it as a full-service social network.
It could be a temporary lull to give Google+’s new management time to reset strategy. Publishers no doubt will be interested in what those next steps will be.
SOME CLOSING COMMENTS
I think you have to characterize Google+ as a "last bastion" for users who are wholly "anti-Facebook or anti-Twitter." Loyal users tend to spend the majority of their time on Google+ or viewing content on some of Google+-integrated sites like YouTube and Gmail and Google+ Communities and Hangouts. We engage with brands within Google+. If we like a brand's post, we give it a 1+ or post a comment about their posting. We never leave Google+. So essentially we are "home bodies."
If these social media research firms are tracking only website referrals, they are missing the bigger picture and true mission of Google -- to create traffic for their Google+-integrated sites, and, of course, the Google search engine, where the actual referrals outside the Google+ ecosystem occur. We also provide a lot of marketing research, which Google uses to improve their targeting based on our interests and online behavioral preferences for their Google search engine. THAT in a nutshell is what these researchers are missing. As a consequence, you are getting pitiful referral numbers, because they don't have the complete picture or data, for that matter.
It is also true that there are a lot of inactive accounts on Google+, but the same can be said for Facebook (estimated at 5% of total registered users) and Twitter.
Having said the above, I am perfectly happy being a Google+ member, because I have found my niche. My followers are techies, social media hounds and gurus, and digital content providers and lovers like myself. I now spend the vast majority of my social media time on Google+ and just don't feel like moving or being on another social media site. I don't have to go outside the Google ecosystem for content. That content comes to me So there.
Courtesy of an article dated June 23, 2014 appearing in The Drum, an article dated April 24, 2014 appearing in TechCrunch, and an article dated June 27, 2014 appearing in Marketing Land
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