Is Google Plus DEAD? not according to Google

Google Plus launched in 2011 was Google’s attempt to combat the rise of Facebook and Twitter. The platform was very clever in its design in that it let you create Circles to share your content to. It was and still is a very flexible way of sharing.

You could share to everyone or drill down to a specific niche or to even just a single follower. But it wasn’t the approach that the Facebook and Twitter generation was used to. There was a learning curve to embrace. Consequently, Google Plus is seen as a failure by just about anyone that you talk to. If you do talk to someone who is a member they will say something along the lines of “Google Plus was good but?” they may even try to tell you that Google Plus is dead.

So is Google Plus dead and buried?

It would appear not because G+ is now looking for beta testers to test drive new features.

Google+ is still alive, and looking for beta testers to try out new features

While Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and other major social platforms regularly hit the headlines, Google+ tends to keep rather a low profile these days. Indeed, you’d be forgiven for wondering if Google’s social network was still going.

G+ made their announcement on Google Plus, no surprises there and then across their social channels.

In addition, the audience on Google Plus is,

• Nearly 74% male
• 72% 35 or older
• Used by just 40% of marketers as a social platform
• Dominated by U.S. users, who make up 55% of its audience
• Visited by just 22% of online adults per month

So is Google Plus still a credible social site?

Well if you go by the numbers above there are still big issues. 27 million unique views per month from 375 million actives is not very good.

Google itself still clearly thinks Google Plus has value. Whether that is within the member base or the data collection metrics or perhaps they just don’t like to fail who knows.

Where Google Plus has found some success is within groups looking to make community pages. It is the groups where you find the activity. And if you do spend time on G+ communities you can see why. Once you understand how it all works you find that it has a lot of really good features that are missing from other social sites. All of this has resulted in a very mainstream site having very popular niche pockets within the platform which may be another reason for its survival. The direction for Facebook with 2 billion plus users may not be very clear where as with a niche site you know exactly why people are there and what they want and where you should go. We are now seeing some great niche blockchain socials being developed. Niche is good.

The benefits of being on Google Plus

There are huge benefits to being on Google+. Any shares you make get indexed pretty much instantly. If you are blogging then this really helps get your articles crawled and indexed quickly on Google. You are also shown in the search results on page one to any of your followers who search for terms you may have optimized for. There is still a hell of a lot of value to Google+ you just need to find it and have a strategy to make it work for you.

Conclusion

So is Google Plus dead? No far from it. Infobunny has always been a strong supporter of G Plus. We still find huge value from having a presence on the platform.

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