Google Plus: How it may have fallen out of favor at Google



Contributing Writer
Photo: Kids Credit: Robin Goossens


Google Plus is no longer being promoted as prominently in Google search results according to Amit Singhal, the head of Google’s core ranking team in a talk last week.

Additionally, Techcrunch reported that Google may have cut off budget for any additional social acquisitions for at least the remainder of the year.  Co-author of the Techcrunch piece, Alexia Tsotsis also suggested Google believes that Google Plus is overstaffed with 450 people (Facebook has about 3500, Twitter about 650 - admittedly not an apples-to-apples comparison).

The big question

Has Google Plus fallen out of favor at Google?

I suspect that’s not the case entirely, but for a company with $44 billion in cash to ratchet back resources from social is telling.

Google Plus has not been stagnant: they just purchased Wildfire, they successfully migrated Google Places into Google Plus Local, they just integrated with Blogger, eBay expressed interest to integrate the +1 button into their site, politicians are still using hangouts to outreach to their constituents… there is a lot of activity and evolution within the platform.  But these are relatively small victories.

The big picture

It’s hard to consider the big picture and think that Google Plus is going to be a viable challenger to Facebook or Twitter.  They’ve become reticent to put additional resources into the platform.

Most of the moves that Google Plus recently made favor augmentation to the current platform rather than a reimagining.  The tacit assumption when sprucing up a house is that it has a solid foundation, and Google Plus does not have a solid enough foundation that appeals to the mass market.  A typical Facebook user could not migrate tomorrow to Google Plus and have the same complement of applications and services (or most importantly size of network).

It may be that Google is waiting for Project Glass to lower the barrier of entry to Google Plus.  It may have other strategic objectives.  Whatever the case, I can’t help but feel a little disheartened by their (apparent, alleged?) de-emphasis on Google Plus.  This may have been foreshadowed when Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social business asserted that “Google Plus is not a social network.”

Google Plus may not be anything close to the product it could or should be but it was the one product with enough resources to give the big guns a run for their money.

Photo Credit

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

Jim Dougherty

@jimdougherty

Writer about social media and tech at Leaders West, I also tweet as @leaderswest.

Infographic: Is the value of Foursquare overstated? http://t.co/X6SwuqLLcD – 8 hours ago

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

  • http://cirquedumot.com/new-readers/ Susan Silver

    I have seen it as a consolidation of Google’s Brand. Trying to get it to all fit under one bonnet. The social aspect is just one shard of the services they offer. I think they saw that things had gotten out of hand with all their experiments. Every day I seem to see something from Google that I had no idea about. Stuff is happening there all the time and only a few projects see any public attention. 

  • Nick

    I think it’s a shame and likely that Facebook, Twitter et al perhaps seem unassailable right now.

    I use Google Plus for several reasons – one of which being that I really dislike the omnipresence of Facebook. I use Twitter as the core of my social network. I have to confess I’m still a little uncertain at how best to use Google Plus but I do know that I want the chance to figure it out.

  • http://www.proservicesks.com Frank Woodman Jr

    Lets hope that the Google brass isn’t jumping the gun and giving Google+ less than it deserves. It’s a great platform that will only grow if they give it a chance. And having used both FaceBook and Google+ I can say that Google+ is certainly more business friendly and with Google’s assets behind it can only grow in the business community as the tools Google offers to augment it are very far reaching. That being said of course it’s going to take time to get app numbers up and to build anywhere near the numbers of users that FaceBook or Twitter have. But when you consider all that can be tied together under Google’s various products it seems hard to see Google + not giving FaceBook a run for their money in the long term. 

  • http://scottadennison.com/ Scott A Dennison

    Jim I think you’re missing something here. Yes G+ has had loads of hiccups, but they have a business model that sustains them regardless of the rate of adoption. I understand that FB has millions more users, BUT their revenue model is crumbling and soon there will be a lot more advertising, or they will begin charging for access. As a public company they now have to produce profits OR ELSE.  Similarly with Twitter. Their ad model has largely failed and I expect that a ‘premium’ version of Twitter will be coming soon OR Twitter will simply run out of money.

  • http://twitter.com/StevenJosephR Steven Ratnik

    It will be hard for Google Plus to compete with Facebook as a social media platform, given the hundreds of millions of users on Facebook.  A person who has 50 or hundreds of Facebook friends and a well-established presence will not be inclined to start over again on Google Plus.  However, they can slowly migrate there but it’s hard to say if people would migrate fast enough for Google. I can’t really see Google Plus taking over from Facebook like Facebook took over from MySpace.

  • Johnmark

    The trick with Google+ is that it does have an appeal in some area on the internet, but it doesn’t “feel” cozy enough to spend lot of time learning these new tricks and circles.  Not with Facebook ease of use.  One area that Google+ could grab some market share is the Facebook concept of their FAN page.  Facebooks insists that the FAN page must be attached to a personal page.  If Google+ allowed for a business page without this stricted  marriage of Personal and Business activities to be mixed….I believe Google+ would accelerate forward!

    Johnmark

  • AmyMccTobin

    I haven’t tried so hard to like something since that really nice guy in high school who I just didn’t dig; I am not surprised at this news. As long as FB doesn’t totally screw up, my clients see no reason to migrate. I tried hard but I’ve given up on G+ being anything but a niche.

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    I was that really nice guy in high school! I agree that it’s got limited appeal, and if they are truly are not incorporating social signals from G+ into search that gives businesses even less incentive to participate. Thanks for reading and for the great insight (though it rekindled painful high school memories!).

  • jimdougherty

    I was that really nice guy in high school!  I agree that it’s got limited appeal, and if they are truly are not incorporating social signals from G+ into search that gives businesses even less incentive to participate.  Thanks for reading and for the great insight (though it rekindled painful high school memories!).

  • AmyMccTobin

    Ha. The reality is that after all these years we all look back on that really nice guy and feel foolish for our teenage choices :) I don’t have the same regrets about G+ :(

  • jimdougherty

    Maybe someday Google will give you a reason to? Cheers, Amy!

  • jimdougherty

    Thanks Johnmark! I agree with the UX insight into G Plus, though they make you attach your business page to a personal site as well. I think Google is going to have some soul-searching to do with this product, and if the past is any indication hopefully they can make the product stronger.

  • jimdougherty

    Thanks for your comment, Steven! I think you’re right – Facebook is entrenched pretty deeply. I do think that a young exodus would spur a mass exodus, but I don’t see that Google Plus is appealing or robust enough to attract and absorb audience on that scale. If Google can’t do it, it will be a long time before someone will!

  • jimdougherty

    Thanks Scott. I respect the premise of Google Plus, my site is optimized for author and publisher attribution in Google Plus and I share all of our stuff there… but I personally don’t care for the UX of G Plus, and there’s pretty strong evidence that women (generally) don’t. I agree that they will turn AdWords on and kill advertising as they have with their other products, and I agree that they’re scalable – I just don’t think people are interested enough in the current product offering to make its scalability matter. My worry is that by ramping down funding they are signaling an acquiescence, and I think that would be a shame. Because if Google can’t create a better product than Facebook who can? Appreciate you reading and commenting!

  • jimdougherty

    Thanks Frank for reading and commenting – I agree that Google is a great platform in its set-up, but think the user experience is a bit unattractive to some. I hope they’ll compete, too – but I think the audience measurement suggests that it will take a lot better concept to appeal to the masses… which may not be great news for the aspects of the network that you enjoy. Thank you again!

  • jimdougherty

    Thanks Nick – I’m right there with you and agree with you on all points. I wish Twitter would stay open source and they would shut down everything else… but of course there are people that feel that affinity to all social networks! Cheers and thanks again for reading and commenting!

  • jimdougherty

    Thanks Susan – I think that’s an excellent insight. Because of the hype and expectation surrounding G Plus I think it may be disappointing to some – but there are a lot of people who absolutely love it. Thanks so much for reading and commenting!

  • http://www.proservicesks.com Frank Woodman Jr

    Well I’m not sure it’s a different model Google needs as much as it’s giving time for this model (Google+) to mature. FaceBook wasn’t what it is today in it’s early forms either and no one starts off with millions of users for a new site even Google. And Google+ has many good features and is a much more controllable model both from a security standpoint and from an integration stand point than FaceBook is even now.

    It’s just going to take time for G+ to mature and for people to learn it’s unique features for it to build out it’s user base. And while it may never have the base that FaceBook has it will become a major player no matter what if Google just continues to support it. But if Google starts to cut back and ignore it, it will surly die like all their other attempts.

    Sadly it seems that what Google really lacks when it comes to setting up a social media site is the discipline to see it through. Google+ is after all their 3 attempt at social media and I truly think that any of the different starts they had would have matured and evolved into good platforms. But somehow Google seems to think that they should be able to build a site that over night is a FaceBook killer. That’s just not going to happen! It took some years for FaceBook to get to where they are now and they didn’t have anywhere near the competition as exists today.

    So I just hope that Google realizes that while it’s not yet a run away success Google+ has a very devoted following that will only grow. And if they kill Google+ who in their right mind would bother to try any other platform they would bring out. I know that for me third time is charm. Mess this up Google and I won’t be trying any social media sight you bring out in the future. Why should I invest time and effort leaning and deploying a presence on a site just to see it closed down.

    Google just needs to get busy and start encouraging developers and users to innovate. What G+ needs is just half the push that Google made for android for it to take off and be a great site.

  • Bob

    I think of Google+ as a mix between a blog and a twitter. It allows you to write fairly long messages, and therefore Google+ users often encouraged to think before they write. But it doesn’t have the mutual friendships of Facebook, and the circles are a little wonky, so It doesn’t look like a Facebook killer.

    But then again the internet is full of succesful web sites that are not Facebook killers. Think of reddit and pinterest. The only problem of Google+ is that It was oversold as a Facebook killer rather than a useful niche product.

  • jimdougherty

    Great points all, Bob! I appreciate you reading and commenting. There are plenty of people who are very bullish on Twitter, and many that are the opposite. That’s why I think that the next big thing in social is going to have to be a database that is versatile enough to accommodate the Facebookers along with the Google Plusers and Pinners. Cheers!

  • http://twitter.com/dancristo Dan Cristo

    Hi Jim,
    I don’t believe it is accurate to say, “Google Plus is no longer being leveraged in their search algorithm” In fact, Google still heavily relies on Google+ in it’s search algorithm, especially personalized results for logged in users, which is the default setting for most.

    What Amit basically said was that they are no longer pushing Google+ bio’s on the right side of the page. Instead, they are using that area for the knowledge graph, which still contains Google+ information, but it’s not as prevalent as it was.

    Google+ is an extremely important ranking factor in many queries, and for you to say it’s not is very misleading to those who want to better understand information retrieval.

    Please consider a correction in your post.

  • jimdougherty

    Thanks, Dan – agreed. It’s is misleading, though I read that they had diminished the weight of G Plus somewhat relative to it’s weight at launch. You would certainly have a keener insight into its impact on SEO than I. Cheers.

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