As seen in IBT
The debate on the activity level on Google+ has raged for years. How many users are really active on it? Is the place a ghost town? Why hasn’t Google shut it down already? Well, I decided to put it to the test, so I did a hardcore analysis of 516,246 randomly selected Google+ profiles, and this post has the scoop for you. Sit down and fasten your seat belts because here we go!
Short Takes
Cited in Fortune
Since you create a Google profile regardless of how you sign up with Google, it should be no surprise that there are many people with profiles on Google+ that have never posted publicly there. But how many? Here you go:
90 percent of the people who create a Google profile have never posted publicly on Google+.
Lifetime Public Posting
Let’s look at a detailed table of our stats, and then I will walk through what you are looking at, row by row:
As you look at the above table, you will see a number of columns. These are defined as follows:
- Category – The current metric we are examining.
- Base Count – The raw total of profiles we examined that had this many public posts.
- % of Active Profiles – Percentage the Base Count represents of the active profiles we found.
- % of All Tested – Percentage the Base Count represents of all the profiles we tested.
- Extrapolate Across 2.2B – Take the Percentage of All Tested profiles and multiply that by 2.2B, which is an estimate of the number of total profiles there are on G+.
- Adjusted Count – This is the Base Count adjusted to filter out people whose sole activity on G+ consists of YouTube comments, YouTube Video shares, G+ profile photo changes, and and other such actions not native to the G+ stream (the “social network” part of Google+ where people post and comment). Note that this determination was made by direct examination of the G+ profile for each of the tested users.
- Adjusted Percentage of All Tested – Percentage the Adjusted Count represents of all the profiles we tested.
- Adjusted: Extrapolate Across 2.2B – Take the Adjusted Percentage of All Tested Profiles and multiply that by 2.2B.
To explain a bit further, G+ critics are quick to point out that much of the activity on G+ is a result of activities not native to the stream. For example, all YouTube Comments, YouTube video shares, profile photo changes, and certain other activities show up as posts in G+. For that reason, we want to be able to show a number of people who are actively engaged in the Google+ stream interface itself.
Now let’s walk through the rows one by one.
- Active profile stats: Following up to our last table showing the No Content profiles, it left us with 49,975 that could be considered active. That is actually 9.7 percent of all tested profiles (and 9.9 percent of all valid profiles). If we extrapolate this out to 9.7 percent of all 2.2B Google+ profiles, that would suggest more than 212 million people who have had some level of activity on Google+.
- 50 or more public posts ever: This is all the Google+ profiles that reported 50 or more posts via the G+ API. This ends up being 0.3% percent of all tested profiles, and would extrapolate to 7.67 million users. This total gets adjusted in the “Adjusted Count” column, and the revised extrapolated total ends up being 6.66 million users.
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Users with 50 or more public posts, posted in last 30 days: We also looked to see how many of these people with 50 or more total posts had also posted in the last 30 days to see if they are still active on G+. To cut to the punch line with the adjusted totals, this nets out to 3.54 million users.
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10 or more public posts ever: Reducing the bar a bit further, the count of people with 10 or more posts ever shows an adjusted total of 21.8 million users.
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5 or more public posts ever: At 5 or more posts, our number is 32.9 million posts.
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1 or more public posts ever: Finally, for people who have ever done a post in the G+ stream, the adjusted, extrapolated total nets out at 111.9 million in total.
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Show 0 public posts in this pass: Of the 49,975 that appeared to be inactive, 7,493 of them showed no public posts on their profiles. That equates to 15.1 percent of the profiles that were originally marked active. It’s possible that these are users who have posted privately on Google+. This may be by choice, or user error, where they unintentionally posted privately.
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People who have not posted publicly on G+: Adding the people who “Show 0 posts in this pass” to inactive profiles, it looks like 91.8 percent of profiles have not posted publicly on Google+.
Here is the extrapolated estimate of numbers of public posting profiles by amount of posting expressed in a graph:
Public Posting in Last 30 Days
Next up, let’s look at who has posted publicly within the last 30 days. Now that you are familiar with the definitions that I’m using, this should be an easy read, so I’ll cut to the chase:
Our extrapolated total suggests that about 23.4 million people have put public posts on Google+ within a given 30 day period. There is a hyperactive group of 358K+ people who do 50 or more public posts per month. After adjustments, we see these two numbers drop to 16M and 106K respectively.
These numbers should give you a good sense of what’s really going on in the G+ stream at this point.
Note that we also found that a small percentage of the total profiles examined currently return 404 errors (which means that the page does not exist), suggesting that the accounts have been abandoned or shut down. Here are the stats for that:
The invalid profiles may include profiles that were robotically created in attempts to artificially game Google+. Those of you who are active on G+ are familiar with your follower count dropping at those times when Google clears a bunch of these out.
Here’s a graph of the amount of public posting in the past 30 days:
Private Activity on Google+
One common speculation is that Google+ has a large amount of activity that is kept totally private. It’s hard to measure that, of course, because it’s private. However, following up a suggestion on a method for doing that by Edward Morbius, I did a fairly extensive analysis.
Basically, this involved comparing the 42,282 accounts that showed public activity in our full survey with 42,282 accounts that showed no public activity at all. While we can’t see the details of any posts, many of these profiles do show follower and/or user counts.
The concept is to compare view counts of those profiles/ public activity with those that show no public activity. In theory, this will allow us to estimate just how much private activity there is going on. (For an explanation of what triggers view counts, click here.)
Here is a summary of the raw data:
I think the most important line is the last one. People showing public posts on their profile averaged more than 45,000 views per profile. People showing no public posts on their profile averaged just under 2,000 views per profile.
This would suggest that the incremental usage levels of people who do no public posting at all might be about 4.3 percent. It is important to note that this does not include “lurkers,” people who regularly view Google+ posts but never post themselves, publicly or privately.
Are the Days of the Google+ Stream Numbered?
A post on this topic demands a section like this, since the G+ stream is the social media network that media and bloggers love to declare as “dead” more than any other. At a cursory glance, our data seems to confirm the many voices out there who have been proclaiming Google+ as either dead or dying for at least the past two years.
If the public activity on Google+ really is this small, surely it can’t have much value to Google, and they must be planning to shut it down or dismember it, right?
Let me provide the simple one word answer to that question: NO. It’s not dead, and I don’t think they are going to kill it any time soon. You can see my full analysis of this in a post I wrote over on Copyblogger: 10 Key Factors That Will Determine the Future of Google+
Here are some of the most important factors that G+ critics overlook:
- +1 Buttons – Our study did not in any way examine use of the +1 buttons. Just as the Like button is a huge part of the activity on Facebook, the +1 button is a major component of Google+, and its value is quite real.
- Lurkers – All social networks have a substantial number of people who simply lurk, or who may just comment on or interact with the posts of others. So when you see those huge numbers on other social networks and want to compare it to what you have seen in this post, just keep in mind that it’s estimated that 90% of the people who are listed as active on Twitter or Facebook are probably just “Lurkers” as well.
- Fully integrated – Google+ shows every evidence of being part of a much larger plan/vision. This is why it’s so integrated into Google’s other platforms, such as YouTube and Google+ MyBusiness.
- Personalization – This is one of the most powerful aspects of Google+. Google is personalizing its search results based on your activity on G+. This allows it to improve its search results for you, and leads to it being a driver of incremental revenue as well (because personalization leads to higher ad click-through rates).
- It’s about the data – To me, this is the major punchline. Social media is a large data source, and Google is determined to play in this sandbox. Don’t spend your time thinking about when Google is going to kill the G+ stream, because I don’t believe that’s going to happen. Instead, the drive at Google is to figure out how to grow it and make it more successful.
In addition to these four reasons, Google employees continue to make public statements about plans for Google+.
In a recent interview, Google’s Sundar Pinchai disputed the notion that Google+ was a flop:
“Google+ has always meant two things for us,” Pichai said. “There’s the stream in the product that you see.” But Google+ also provided a way for the company to ensure users were signed in to its services with “a common identity across our products,” he said. “The second part was in many ways even more important than the first part. That part has worked really well for us.
But Pichai said that two important parts of Google+, Photos and Hangouts, may soon be separated from the main product. “I think increasingly you’ll see us focus on communications, photos and the Google+ Stream as three important areas, rather than being thought of as one area,” he said.
Another recent interview published on Medium was with Demis Hassabis of DeepMind, an AI company acquired by Google. The interview was done by Steven Levy, and one of the key interesting comments Hassabis made about plans to show off their technology was this one:
In six months to a year’s time we’ll start seeing some aspects of what we’re doing embedded in Google Plus, natural language and maybe some recommendation systems.
As I suggested in the last of my five points above, this sounds more like a plan to double down than back off!
Summary
So there you have it, a deeper look at what is truly going on within the G+ stream. Yes, it’s small, but it’s vibrant. You must take into account comments, use of the +1 buttons, and lurking activity to have a fair comparison with other social networks.
For example, if you estimate that 90 percent of a social network is in some form of lurking mode, you get some sort of idea where things are with the G+ stream overall.
Thanks are due to Edward Morbius for his original review of 2820 profiles, which led me to do this more comprehensive study.
And, as always, thanks to Mark Traphagen for his ongoing insights into all things Google+.
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As always. Very interesting observations. You always provide a different perspective. Thank you. As always… there is what I call the 3% crowd that can take an idea and actually get the job done. The “lurkers” are always the 90% crowd.
I have been using Google+ since the first week it was active. I post 30 messages to my streams, several with photos, each day. I respond to or +1 stream activity ~100 times a day. All this is in private circles. I have only posted 5 or 6 times Public. The number of people in my circles has been has high as 2000, and as low as 200. Currently it has been hovering around 300. The reason for the change is that I run a cleaning program every quarter to remove everyone from my Circles who has not posted within the past 60 days.
I find Google+ very valuable for two reasons. The first is that the education level of the people on Google+ and their knowledge base is far greater than any other similar social platform. The second is because Google+ is an active social platform. For me to see people or topics, I choose. I decide what is visible in my stream. As a contrast, FaceBook, like television, is a passive platform. All you do is sit back and they will fill your stream for you. Everyone I’ve met on Google+ has been the kind of person who eschews passive feeds, knows what they want, and who they want to share with.
For a certain type of person, Google+ is perfect. And I think Google is definitely looking for these types of people as customers, because these users are or will be decision makers in companies and politics, and as an added bonus- potential employees.
Great article. I don’t see Google Plus going away either. I have more friends and colleagues getting more frustrated with Facebook and spending less time on it. What I also see and predict is that Google My Business will become more mobile friendly and linked closer with Google Maps. I see it eventually allowing “Check Ins” and unlocking “special offers” with a check in at the business, rather than using other mobile apps, it will be all one, integrated with Google Maps and Google My Business and maybe even Google Plus.
I also much prefer G+ to Facebook. In fact my Facebook account is only used by my wife as a gaming avatar. I’ve not personally logged in to Facebook in at least 3 years and probably longer. Once I understood what a circle was and how I could use it to control content I was really, really willing to “dump the wall”!
I have never stopped to analyze my own usage of G+ but I would say that I am really active and so is my company which I like a lot. I’ve also formed some really great professional/personal relationships with clients. All in all I think G+ suits my own wants for a social media platform perfectly.
Shame there is no measure of post quality. Facebook is crammed full of uninteresting crap from boring people, Google+ is the exact polar opposite. I can read 10 interesting posts every day on G+ but Farcebook is awash with drivel.
No reference about communities? All publications in communities are private, but they are the most vibrating zone of Google+. If you forgot it, you only see a little part of the history.
Hi Jesús – actually, community posts are often public. If the community is public then the post is public, and it shows up on the poster’s profile.
Sorry Eric, I was thinking about people who choose to not show their community posts in their profile, but you’re right: posts in public communties are public by default
Nice to see an honest attempt to get to the facts on this. Remember how anyone who questioned Google’s claim that it had “350 million active users” got pretty savagely attacked there? I may not understand this completely, but it seems to be evaluating activity for all time – or for a long time period, while lots of people noticed a big drop off in activity fairly recently – in the last six months or so. My own carefully curated circles have lost almost half of the active users – cool people, they just found Google+ no longer met their needs and went elsewhere.
From comments of Google execs I think a picture is emerging of what will happen. What we knew as “Google+” will be primarily a photo sharing app, and I suspect Blogger will play a much bigger role in “the stream”. Possibly Google will even make the posts we make now part of a Blogger account. When you think about it, this makes sense – Google+ was always a bad fit for writers.
Actually, Community posts are only visible if the user has elected to show them on their profile. I’ve done some light followup analysis that strongly suggests that at least _public_ Communities don’t see much traffic or discussion, based on keyword searches on topical terms at G+,tallying Stream and Community results, and across numerous other domains.
There is a distinct difference in needs between users of socialmedia sites and blog sites. The users of socialmedia appriciate miniblogs about daily news or special topics of interest, mostly experienced with the mobile device. Those users will not read larger blog articles at that time. The fast social interaction will give an emotion of being connected with people in their circles. For this reason I don’t see G+ merging with Blogger.
Mark (anon commenter above) cries the differing post types and their equally differing values. I’d weigh in to add that there was a point as well where I felt the dull ache of yet another meme sliding by in my stream, only to discover on closer inspection that these lower value posts are actually the small talk of the net. The, “How’s the weather?” chatter that precedes a more serious discussion. How to improve upon that? Simply create your own meme and stop re-re-re-sharing the same old ones you are seeing in everyone else’s steams.
PS – Your 5 factors critics overlook deserves infographic treatment. Let’s see if Irfan beats me to it! 🙂 Good job Mark and Eric.
Ok, interesting, lots of numbers and obvious G+ fans. So, I ask you this – I post great content on behalf of my clients and it falls on deaf ears. I post the same content, and I’m not talking drivel, on their FB biz pages, without an ad or a boost and get lots of comments and engagement. Why would I focus on G+ when it appears to me to be a ghost town? Serious question. I’d like to embrace it – gives me another revenue stream for my clients. Interested in your response. Thank you.
G+ works different; your readers will only see your content when they are in your circles or are followers or when there is a lot of interaction on the post. To start and reaching your target group, you can ask people to become member of your circle for a specific topic. Then try to collect a lot of followers with attractive content. The collected followers will see your posts at the follower tab. In the case of G+ you have to deserve your public by creating content and be recognized in your expanding network. Always label your content keywords (chooce max 3) for search purposes.
it’s hard to speculate about the future of G+ because it’s not clear that Google has plans for it.
This was a great analysis. Does anyone have any insight into the SEO value, if any that Google+ drives?
My client seems to think there is something there, but I have been unable to find any strong evidence either way.
Interesting point, Dave Bennett, about the different education level of the people at Facebook and Google+. That’s my impression as well.
Because of that G+ might have a higher value for active users, and also for passive readers and viewers (of photos, videos and webinars).
Google never intended to create a social network similar to Facebook.
/Arnaldo
I am a “newbie” for both Facebook and Google+ . I think that Google+ is more flexible in that you can create many circles and choose which ones appear in your stream so that you have much more control over the content that you see.
If you don’t like some content that appears you can remove the poster from your circles or block them with just one click.
On the down side, I have had “indecent” posts appear in my stream which I think is the reason why Google has decided to remove the “Adult” content – it is not the sort of stuff you would want showing up on your screen at work or at home around your kids. (Admittedly this is because I have added people I don’t know in an effort to increase my followers….)
Younger kids with mobile phones are using Instagram, Tumblr, Kik & there will probably be others according to fashion. To them Facebook is “old hat” and Google+ is not something they need. Yet. Competition will be strong to see who picks up these users as they grow up and enter the workforce.
Advertisers have had to change as they see their traditional methods of advertising such as TV and newspapers dwindle. We are beginning to see TV ads for sites on the internet. The Facebook business page was something that business wanted so that they could get to the Facebook users. Facebook wanted it so they could increase revenue. It wasn’t something that Facebook users themselves wanted. Now, with data mining, advertising is better received by users because it is targeted to their specific needs.
Google has the whole package . On the desktop, it provides everything you need within easy reach on your browser. With Chrome you can add extensions to suit your personal way of using the internet.
My opinion only, with no stats to back it up, but I definitely get the feeling that there are more male Google users. I have also found only a few older people on Google+ although I know for a fact that many older people I know who don’t really like computers or Facebook, have Gmail accounts for email. They probably aren’t even aware of Google+ , Google Docs or Drive.
With their purchase of Youtube Google are positioned well to pick up both younger and older users.
There is no doubt that Google will change but it is not dead by any means, it has simply prepared itself to react to the needs of its users as it develops.
I totally agree with you Dave Bennett. Google Plus is for front-runners who learn and who are mastering the platform, even. as it continues to morph. The “lurkers” who are not brain-dead, are in fact, learning from front-runners regarding innovative and practical new ways to grow business, in multiple ways, including “face-to-face” even, locally, regionally and across the planet. The power of Google+ is highly “deceptive” to newcomers accustomed to just passively “drifting” in a social stream and who do not understand how to use the platform right, informed by tried and true marketing communications and learning principles. We are already focused and going down the road and some of us even offer consulting and training services that can help people and organizations benefit from this amazing platform as well.
Art Johnson
New World Communications
Hi Eric:
Really interesting research. I am quite surprized with this data: ” 90 percent of the people who create a Google profile have never posted publicly on Google+.”
I want to know : Does Google Plus have SEO Value Now?
Best Regards
Here are a couple of pieces I did awhile back on engagement.
https://plus.google.com/+RobertAnderson/posts/YAx2tC5ddBC
https://plus.google.com/+RobertAnderson/posts/JYYejnxmBje
https://plus.google.com/+RobertAnderson/posts/aP3ieqqoZgE
I think if you want to get a sense of use and engagement you need to take a loof at follower counts. G+ is an ant farm that improves Google’s search algorithm. The fact that Google watches how you interact with people across their products makes the 795 million invested in this little start up worth every penny. Google grosses $100 million a day. Their market cap is 5 and a half years that number. So they spent a weeks revenues to get a front row seat into social behavior, interaction and relationships not to mention perfecting algorithms that know spooky good things.
Interesting study. I find the tools on Google + to be amazing, but the lack of usage is a sore point for anybody who wants to actually market on this platform. Facebook is already ahead of the game, and destroys Google from a social advertising capability.
I think Google+ is used most often to leave reviews of a business.
OMG I hated google+ so much !! Its obvious people don’t post in there ur use it, because google FORCED us to registration !! I hate it, I hated it, I never ever wanted a google+ account but for some searching and for viewing youtube videos google did force us to registrate, that’s why people like me have those dumb accounts but we dont really use them, I never even got interested on socializing with that, I just wanted to say that im happy that **** is dead because like I said Google pretty much FORCED me to have that stupid acoount, SO GLAD THAT **** IS DONE or at least it flopped. !
Good stuff. I followed a link from Greg Standberg to get here, so I guess I am in the 10% active bunch. Your research numbers are even worse than I thought but looks like they are correct.
Laurie,
I completely get where you are coming from. What I find, consistently, is that if you build your following in a targeted manner — with active/engaged users, whom are very interested in your clients topic, then you will see engagement that rivals what you can do organically in Facebook.
Then there is also the aspect of the effect that personalized search has on those users. Personal search exposure ends up driving higher volumes of organic, referral and direct traffic. Also, I see consistently a decrease in bounce rates as increase in page views. But, it all starts with a following.
The active people on G+ are intellectual, looking for information and researching products /services with intent. So really my question to you is how can that be ignored?
No surprise for me, they forced this Google plus thing down our mouth, no one asked for it and no one will use it
I only have a google+ account because it was forced on me so naturally I’ve never felt inclined to bother with it, I’m sure this is true of a lot of people.
This is not a very rigorous use of sampling technique. You should look at the p-value of your sample and see how likely it is to fit to the actual population. Otherwise, the whole analysis is meaningless and entirely dependent on the drawn sample of profiles.
Then again while Facebook is super active 99% of it is overshared garbage and links from reddit 2 weeks prior. Quite honestly I am very happy with G+ regardless of the amount of activity.
Also as you well know many gmail and android users are forced into creating a g+ profile in order to rate apps in the app store.
Ya and g+ will never get that way once it becomes more popular. /s
Nobody uses Google social networking. You want to login to youtube to watch an age resticted video but don’t have a youtube account???? Well now you have a google plus account too. See how this works? The person who wrote this article failed to mention all the ways that users are forced into creating accoutns for the sure purpose of posting to youtube or other google related website forums. And those other websites that are affilated have nothing to do with google plus, yet always require an account creation simply to have a username and a password to post elsewhere. Yeah, there aren’t many people use google plus because well most of us didn’t want a public profile, and only wanted to post a comment somewhere or watch an age restricted video on youtube. Ugh. I thought the article was nice, but it didn’t really explain what is actually happening, and only that something is happening.
Hi – actually, if you read the article, you will see that we REMOVED posts /comments /video updated originating from YouTube. The study is specific to posts that occurred ONLY in the G+ stream directly.
Why would I post publicly if I value my privacy but still want to socialize with friends? Is it being criticized for not being Twitter? Would posting publicly a good thing for most people?
posting info to a data mining company is not “getting the job done?” .
Have been using Google+ as an initial outreach since it’s integrated with Blogger before sharing the post on Facebook. Some observations:
1. Sharing on “Public” is terrible.
2. Sharing to targeted communities gets significantly more +1s and shares.
3. Compared to when some of our articles got shared on Facebook, the reach is tiny.
Still learning and fine-tuning the strategy. Great article, Eric…useful stuff.
“You want to login to youtube to watch an age resticted video but don’t have a youtube account???? Well now you have a google plus account too.”
No. You don’t. I have a Google Apps account for my family, meaning that I have full control over what my users can and cannot access with their Google accounts that are part of that domain. I’ve also disabled G+ across the entire domain on principle.
I still create YouTube playlists, like and dislike videos, and view whatever videos I want to. The only thing I cannot do on YouTube is comment on the videos and the comment section is a cesspool anyway, so why would I want to do that?
You *do* need a YouTube *profile* but that is not a G+ profile. They’re normally the same thing, but they do not have to be.
Front runners are not people who hold onto a social network that is not supported by the main stream users of social networks, thats asinine.
The difference between facebook and G+ is G+ arrogantly tries to claim its better or has more intelligent users while facebook gives people the service they want, G+ thinks ‘social’ networks are a platform to promote your BS seo tips or advertise your trashy self published novel nobody wants to read. G+ completely ignores the social aspects and concentraits on advertising space and promotional advantages while facebook gives users a social platform to engage people on a social level not a marketing avenue to bother users who are after a social network not a business portal or you-tube adds without the videos afterwards.
G+ has failed it is a ghost town the idea G+ users are somehow smarter or more aware is simply not true, its the same audience as Facebook goes after but facebook understands social interaction a bit better, its all about personalities G+ is all about self promotion to strangers .One is a true social network the other is an arrogant marketing space with no personality or soul, the people dont refuse to use G+ because they are less intelligent they dont use it as it doesnt offer what they are after, a social networking space not a business promotional space.
As if Facebook is any better.
Way to read the article!
This is a great piece, with lots of detail and I like that you took the trouble to look for real activity rather than people using it accidentally or unwillingly.
Great research and article, thanks Eric.
I’m sick to death of the volume of posts declaring G+ dead everytime an internal reshuffle is made/features added or removed.
Personally, I get a good level of engagement on the platform, with less spam/trolling/personal comments left on my posts. It’s great to have some actual data to work with on creating my next post 🙂 So thanks for that.
I don’t think that it’s likely to be shut down anytime soon. There are plenty of users who are highly active and as mentioned above, lots too who are members of communities. The problem has been that as everyone who signs up to Google services automatically creates and account, it has skewed the numbers and made it difficult to understand just how many people are using it.
I’m not sure about more intelligent people being on G+ but would agree that posts on the network are generally much more useful than those you find on Facebook. If it was the same as FB you could argue that it’s been killed off, but it’s a vastly different platform.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Google came forward and told us once and for all its plans for G+ though 😉
Agreed! Would be great if they were clear on the plan for G+, and also their own perspective on user numbers.
I totally agree with u…A learning platform…Why would Google even think of shutting it down in the first place? GOOGLE shld make it better for us users…Fix the bugs if any…I know for one, My Thinkers community was shut down for reasons l don’t know…Was the most controversial community…It had over 600,000 users…posting on daily basis thru out the day…I have no idea how many posts daily but l for one posted on Thinkers for the past 5 years once early morn…e.g l wld at times get 120 comments 200 likes , sometimes less…