Users losing interest in Google+ as traffic drops, research firm reports

Google+‘s explosion into the social networking sphere may be slowing down, Bloomberg reports.

While growth for the social network continues to grow in terms of user numbers — 10-million in two weeks and 20-million in a month — a report shows that traffic to the site does not reflect the same trajectory.

Experian Hitwise, a company which tracks internet behaviour, has found that the initial interest shown by users seems to be waning.

Bloomberg quotes the research company as finding that total visits to Google+ dropped some three percent to 1.79 million in the US in the week ending 23 July from the prior seven days.

This is against data as reported on Experian’s blog, that in the previous week — ending July 16 — Google+ visits had seen a rise of 283 percent, and the week before that — ending July 9th — 821 percent.

Experian writes in a blog that, following the launch — in particular pointing to when invites to the service became more available — visits to Google+ “steadily increased”.

The research firm found that the period between July 5th and July 12th saw the biggest peaks in Google+’s traffic.

This data comes after Google co-founder and CEO since April, Larry Page, recently informed reporters that Google was seeing over 1 billion items being shared and received in a day on the social network, and confirmed the 10-million users statistic.

Experian also found that the average amount of time a Google+ user spent on the site declined 10 percent, from five minutes, 50 seconds to five minutes, 15 seconds.

Mashable quotes Matt Tatham, a spokesperson for Experian, as downplaying the findings, saying, “This is not a huge drop”.

Experian also noted that its research doesn’t include traffic from third party apps — such as the recently launched iPhone app — or users accessing the social networking via the mobile site.