The Google+ roller coaster has decided to take yet another plunge in traffic. Reports from data analytics company Chitika are saying that Google+ traffic has dropped 60 percent after its public launch on September 20. Traffic for the site has settled back down to its pre-launch level, and makes us wonder if traffic will ever really increase.
As soon as Google+ was open to the public on September 20 traffic skyrocketed, on September 26 we reported that traffic was up1269 percent. Unfortunately for Google+ this was the start of the decline for the sites traffic, as it has been in a steady decline since September 22.
It is clear that Google was able to attract people to the service, but why aren’t people continuing to use the service? Chitika believes that one of the reasons traffic dropped so drastically is because of the fact that Google+ really doesn’t offer users anything that Facebook doesn’t, and because everyone already uses Facebook. Google+ has not done anything to really distance its service from Facebook’s, and that is why it is able to attract people to the service, but can’t keep them coming back.
Google is trying to lure users to keep coming back by offering some of Facebook’s top games like CityVille, but it appears that even games aren’t helping. Facebook users only spend about 10 percent of their time in apps so even if games catch on at Google+ it might not have as big an impact as Google would like.
It seems as though the huge spike in Google+ traffic was a perfect storm. Not only was the private service finally opened to the public, but it came out right as Facebook users were unhappy with the new design, and that most likely caused the huge rush of traffic. Google will have to find a way to drive people to the site between Facebook redesigns if it wants the service to be successful.
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