11 Facts and Figures on Google+ Growth

A recent survey of 700,000 consumers in the US shows that Facebook is the least popular social media site when it comes to consumer satisfaction according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index in its annual E-business report.

Wikipedia ranks highest at 78 with YouTube next at 74 and Facebook at 66 on the acsi.org index.

What is also revealing is that Google ranks the highest in the “Search engine and portal category” with a customer satisfaction index of 83.

Will High Customer Satisfaction in Search Translate to Social?

One of the questions to ask with the launch of Google+ is

“Will Google’s high customer satisfaction index that it has achieved with its search engine coupled with Facebook’s low ranking in social media satisfaction translate into success for Google+?”

Google has a track record in making things work well on-line and Google+ with its great design and user interface added to a potential internal promotion market with over 1 billion users on its on-line properties (including Gmail, Android mobile platform, YouTube and Google blogs) is well placed to shake up the social networking universe.

Google+ is Creeping into Your On-Line World

Google has not started to promote overtly to its billion+ users but is adding social features to its platforms one feature at a time.

Have you noticed the following changes recently?

• Pop ups in Gmail indicating friends (Gmail will get much more social over time)
• New “followers” listed in Google Reader with a linked Google profile
• “Your Name with +” when you use Google.com in the far left top corner that will take you to your Google+ social network if you have registered

The social revolution in Google has begun and Google+ is the glue!

11 Google+ Facts and Figures

1. Google+ passed 18 million users on July 20 according to an analysis by Paul Allen
2. At its peak this month it added over 2 million users a day according to Paul’s figures
3. Google+ is now averaging approximately 750,000 new users a day
4. Early estimates of more than 75% of users being male has now dropped to 57% according to Hitwise
5. Google+ initially attracted a younger crowd (18-25)  but the highest share of users at  38% are currently between 25 and 34 years old
6. The top cities for Google users are in ranking order: Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco
7. Google+ is the 42nd ranked social networking site in the US
8. The Google+ iPhone app is currently the top downloaded free app in iTunes
9. Google and Gmail account for over 50% of all upstream traffic to Google+
10. The Google+ audience tends to me more affluent, over indexing for those earning a household income of $60k and over and particluarly $150k and up
11. The average visit time on Google+ was 5 minutes and 50 seconds on week ending July 19, 2011 (up from four minutes and fifty two seconds the previous week) . In comparison users spent over 21 minutes on Facebook

Some of the feedback from friends regarding being on Google+ is that hardly any of their friends are on Google+ so it is a bit like a ghost town but of course this will change over time. It appears from the Hitwise figures that a lot of users are registering from curiosity and then visiting infrequently.

Will Google+ become mainstream?

I will watch with interest as the “Hype” wears off to see if it maintains solid growth and increases user time over the next few months but you have to admit Google+ is off to a flying start!

More Reading

• 7 Reasons Why Google+ Drives Hyperactive Engagement
• How to Increase your Google+ Followers
• Google+ Sets New Growth Records
• 50 Fascinating Facebook facts and Figures
• The 10 Best Facebook Campaigns

Sources:

• Paul Allen
• Experian Hitwise

Image by The Daring Librarian