Actually, Searches For “Google+” Are Petering Out

 Just last week, Google was promoting the fact that “Google+” was the No. 2 fastest-growing search term of the year in its annual Zeitgest list. And it did have an amazing pop when it hit “10 million members” a couple weeks after launch last summer. People wanted to know what this new Google+ thing was all about. And since it didn’t exist the year before, on a percentage basis the growth in the number of searches for the term was astronomical.

If you are not paying close attention and hear that “Google+” was the No. 2 search term of the year, you might assume that a lot of people are still searching for it. But you would be wrong. The Zeitgeist site shows all sorts of stats about that pop in searches for “Google+” back in July.

What you won’t find there is the overall trend of searches for the term, and the fact that searches have been declining. In order to find that you have to go to Google Insights for Search, a terrific tool that lets you plot search volume for any term. You can see the chart for “Google+” above. The trend is not good. There was an initial spike at launch, then a lot of hype around the 10-million-user announcement, and then a smaller spike in September when it opened up to everyone. Then the search volume just kind of peters out.

Why is this important? Searches are an indication of pure intent. People search for what they intend to do. Venture capitalists look at search volume data all the time as a gut check to see whether there is any interest in a startup’s product. The same logic applies to products at big companies like Google. If fewer and fewer people are searching for “Google+”, it makes you wonder if anyone is actually using it. Remember, just because Google+ has tens of millions of registered users, that doesn’t mean those people ever came back after Google made them click to register.

All you have to do for a reality check on this approach is compare searches for “Twitter” to “Google+” (see chart below). Interest in Twitter dwarfs Google+. (Don’t even try to compare it to searches for “Facebook”—that spike turns into a flat line). People search for what they intend to do or want to learn more about. They even search for “google” or “gmail,” but not so much for “google+.”

The fact that the “Google+” line isn’t as big as the one for “Twitter” or “Facebook” would be fine if it was growing. But it’s not. It’s going in the opposite direction.

Google+ pulls 25 million visitors in a month!

According to a data released by Comscore, Google+ attracted 25 million users in a month, which makes it the fastest website to reach that huge audience size. Though Google made a late entry into the social networking, but its new site, Google+, is giving a tough competition to Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.

Google+ was launched in late June, and by 24th July it managed to attract 25 million visitors and the number is growing to one million visitors a day. Whereas Facebook took about three years to attract 25 million visitors and Twitter took just over 30 months. Though Google+ kicked off by almost breaking all the records in the social networking, but it still has time to be counted among the long-term success projects. MySpace is one such site which pulled 25 million visitors in less than two years, but it couldn't keep up to its pace n lost a lot visitors in last two years. Therefore, it is too early to draw a conclusion regarding Google+ in the long run.

While United States had more than 6 million visitors, India record more than 3.6 million visits. Canada and U.K. had 1 million visitors each, Germany had over 920,000 and Brazil over 780,000. France and Taiwan had 500,000 visitors each.

5 reasons why you should switch to Google Plus

Although it's too early to speculate on the fate of Facebook, Google Plus, the social networking arm from the internet giant Google, offers many a thing from ease of use to data privacy that are worth to switch over to it. Creating a new breakthrough, Google has finally come up with its own social networking platform which is rich in content and features. ComScore has revealed that Google Plus has received 20 million viewers in the first three weeks of its operation. Predicted to become the vital part of Google's whole identity, certain features of Google plus give us a valid reason to consider leaving Facebook for Google Plus.

1. Integration with Google services

The integration capability of Google Plus is regarded as the biggest factor that drives people close to this social networking website. It's being integrated with all the products and services from Google which allows the users to monitor all Google Plus events while being tuned to any of its services.

2. Data backup

Personal data protection has always been a nightmare for Facebook users and Google Plus is all equipped to solve this trouble in their social networking platform. While Facebook demands you to make some of your personal data public which is hard to delete, Google Plus provides the freedom take back all the data you have entered in the website. The site has a special tool named ?Data Liberation? with which you can download data from different Google services such as Google profile, Picasa, Google+ stream etc.

3. Group chat
Google plus has added greater value to its social networking arm with the strong group chat feature which is said to be one of the biggest disadvantages of its rival Facebook. The webs
ite has made it very simple to create a special group video chat with its Hangouts features. Hangouts features a very sleek interface that does not need additional downloads and it's free forever. 

4. Great mobile app
Migrating content from your mobile phone to Google plus is created in such a way that it?s very effortless, cleaner and is a lot more functional with Google+ mobile app. Goo
gle Plus is eying to attract the huge Android user base with its mobile app that is fast becoming a seamless appendage of the social media.

5. Privacy settings
Google Plus has created the concept of privacy settings much simpler in comparison with the settings in various websites which may lead the users to great blunders. With the f
eature known as Circles, you can create a different page of yours for different groups of people. This gives you the freedom to share the content with the friend circles that you want to. Separate circles for your family, friends, colleagues etc can be created here.

Google+ a little more............

In just two weeks, Google's much-anticipated and delayed foray into the ‘social' Web, Google Plus, crossed the 10 million mark. Despite being launched in an exclusive by-invites-only mode, no less than 1 billion items were shared in a single day and the +1 button (similar to Facebook's ‘Like') is already all over the Web.

Google may finally have got third time lucky with Plus. After two failed attempts to enter the ‘social' sphere on the Web — the lukewarm Google Wave and the controversial Buzz — Plus' “field trial phase” appears to be going down well with users. Amidst reports of Facebook (the social networking giant that has over 750 million users worldwide) losing users — which has been rubbished by the firm — Plus hopes to give users more privacy, more control over their data stream and an integrated Google experience by weaving together its plethora of existing services.

Figures quoted by third-party analytics service provider, Google Analytics, project that India is the second largest country in terms of Google Plus users, comprising over 5.6 per cent of the total share, following the U.S. at 49.3 per cent. The number of active users is pegged at around 18,000 in India. While the accuracy of this statistic cannot be vouched for, experts say this is plausible given that Google dominates the Internet in emerging markets.

Indeed, Google appears to have learnt its lessons. But can it replace the wide appeal of Facebook or provide the simplicity and speed of Twitter? Plus will have to do a lot more than it is doing now to actually get people to make that shift. So what does Plus offer? For starters, Google Plus' Beta already appears to score over its competitors on privacy. Learning its lessons from Buzz, which creeped out Gmail users, privacy controls are fairly ubiquitous. This is particularly important, because unlike Facebook, Google users are bound to be paranoid about the fact that their personal email is closely linked to this new social media platform.

The interface is clean. Not as cluttered as Facebook yet, the minimalist interface offers three principal choices: Circles, Hangout and Sparks. Of these, both Circles and Hangouts score over what's already on offer, while Sparks appears to be attempting to offer you a steady stream of content from the Web, based on your ‘interests'.

In Circles, Plus takes a cue from Diaspora, the Free and distributed social networking alternative to Facebook. Like ‘aspects' on Diaspora, which allows you to compartmentalise your friends and control what you share with whom, Circles allows you to create your own groups too. And discreet it is, for your ‘circles' are only visible to you. This, to date, is the most appealing feature of Plus.

Hangouts, too, are great, and scores over Facebook's recent Web-chat feature, because it allows you to Web-conference with 10 users at the same time.
For brands

Google has announced that Plus is currently only for individual users. However, its separate registration process for brands and businesses has already drawn over 35,000 applications.

Gaurav Mishra, social media expert and Asia Director of Social Media at MSLGroup, says, “In the long term, there are two important players: You Tube, a possible marketing tool, and Blogger, still the biggest blogging platform. It will be interesting from a marketing perspective to see how it integrates with Blogger, Adwords and Search.”

Google+ Circles: Illusion of privacy

Privacy control is one reason Google+, the new kid in the social media sphere, is getting rave reviews. It's intrigued me enough that I've signed up. But I'm not quite convinced that what appears to be a growing obsession with privacy will power the search engine behemoth's push in an arena dominated by Facebook which in 2010 had users comprising 10 per cent of the Earth's population.

In a Time edition in which Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was named The 2010 Person of the Year, Richard Stengel wrote: "All social media involve a mixture of narcissism and voyeurism. Most of us display a combination of the two, which is why social media are flourishing faster and penetrating deeper than any other social development in memory."

Signs of this abound on Facebook.

Why Facebook is popular?

Alone in your room at night, you open your News Feed, click on a post by a friend you've met through work correspondence, and find out she's enrolled in a pole dancing class. You marvel at the "discovery" for a few seconds or minutes, depending on your level of voyeurism and move on to important tasks.

Some Facebook users want more privacy controls on things they share, while others are glad the Zuckerberg idea of privacy clouds their stream of posts to blow their own trumpets.

Here comes Google+, a social media project that appears to be giving users the dial to regulate the level of their own narcissism and others' voyeurism. It is touted to be the archrival that is taking the cue from Facebook critics.

Introducing Circles. In Google+, you assign people to Circles. When you post, you indicate the people you're giving access to it by specifying a Circle. If you're the type who believes that everything you share is relevant to anyone, you pick "Public" before you click on the share button.

It works in cases when you want a discussion among specific people in your social graph. If you're the type who fusses about unintentionally giving the idea that you are vain, choosing Circles assures you you are not so egotistical to believe that what interests you is worth everyone's time.