Google+ hits 100 million active users

Last week Google announced that Google+ had hit 100 million monthly active users across mobile and desktop. But how active are those ‘active’ users and how does that compare to similar sites such as Facebook?

Looking at average visit time to the two sites we can see that people spend a lot more time on Facebook than on Google+ (21 vs 8 minutes) but that over the past year people have been starting to spend more time on Google+ while time spent on Facebook has decreased.

Looking at the number of times a person returned to the site in August 2012 we can see that people are a lot more likely to return to Facebook then to Google+ suggesting that people are more engaged with Facebook than Google+. In fact if the comScore numbers are correct, on average people only visit Google+ once or twice per month.

Total visits to Google+ in the UK have been increasing which aligns with the news that they’ve been increasing the number of users over time. Looking at the same data for Facebook we can see that the number of people visiting Facebook.com in the UK has been decreasing over time. This does not necessarily mean that the number of users are decreasing as they may simply be visiting the site using a mobile device which will not be picked up in the chart below.

The number of Google+ users is increasing and they are starting to spend more time on the site, however levels of engagement are still far below Facebook’s and people are still not returning to the site in significant numbers. Google+ is still more of a way of gathering social signals for Google and connecting users across Google’s online properties rather than a social media destination that rivals the likes of Facebook.

What has your experience of Google+ been, do you use or see significant activity on Google+? Let us know.

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