Google+ sees surge in traffic

While the Facebook changes have hogged the limelight, its competitor Google+ has been quietly and rapidly increasing its user registrations.

Google+ came out of its field trial phase on Wednesday last week, allowing anyone and everyone to register for the service without requiring an invitation.

Google advertised the platform with a large blue animated arrow on the Google homepage, pointing to the Google+ sign-in button.

While Google is yet to release official figures, according to calculations by Ancestry.com founder, Paul Allen, user registrations shot up dramatically last week. Allen now estimates that Google+ has 43.4 million users, with a third of them being added since last week Wednesday.

“In the past couple of days, since Google opened its doors to the general public over age 18, the growth rate has skyrocketed to rates we only saw during the first week of its 'field test' - back when it had a small number of users to begin with, the growth rates were of course much higher,” said Allen.

“When I checked the data [on Friday], it is clear that Google+ is absolutely exploding - 30% growth in just two days and with a base of nearly 30 million members already.”

At the beginning of August, a report by ComScore said Google+ was the fastest growing social network in history; however, the same report documented a sharp decline in user activity and daily visits to the site.

However, new data released by Experian Hitwise yesterday, shows a significant rise in traffic on Google+. According to its statistics, visits to the site increased by 1 269% in the last week.

“Opening access created a massive spike in market share of visits for the site, with a 1 269% growth from the week ending 17 September to the week of 24 September,” says director of research at Hitwise, Heather Dougherty, adding that the site also received nearly 15 million total US visits last week.

In the same week, Google+ has gone from ranking as the 54th most visited site in the social networking and forums category, to eighth place.

According to Dougherty, the new statistics show a rapid evolution of Google+'s audience composition from its launch in July. She says it illustrates how quickly the cycle from “innovator” and “early adopter” to “early majority” and “late majority” can occur.

Dougherty says while “early adopters” still account for a large share of Google+ traffic, the audience profile has shifted in the last week to include the lower to middle income groups.

“This evolution in audience profile indicates that Google+ may be shifting into the 'early majority' stage.”