Experian Hitwise has shared some new data with us regarding Google+.
According to the firm, Google+ received over 1.79 million total U.S. visits last week (ending July 23), which is a decrease of 3% vs. the previous week (ending July 16th), when it received 1.86 million total visits.
Not only have visits declined, but so has time spent on site. The average time spent on the site, according to Experian Hitwise, was down by 10% from 5 minutes and 50 seconds to 5minutes and 15seconds.
Other interesting data the firm shared:
- Among the top 50 Upstream sites, 59% of Upstream traffic to Google+ last week came from other Google properties. Google.com accounted for 37% of Upstream traffic to the site. Gmail accounted 15.59%, a 9% increase from previous week.
- 40% of Upstream traffic to Google+ last week came from Search Engines (8% increase). Email provided the 2nd largest amount of Upstream traffic accounting for 19%.
- 59% of visits to Google+ are from Males, that is a 4% increase from previous week (4 weeks ending July 23th).
- Among age demos, 33% of visits are from users age 25-34 for the 4 weeks ending July 23rd.
While this data is US-only, and does not include mobile or 3rd party application traffic, this can’t be good news for Google, as the rapid growth of the network has been capturing a great deal of media attention. This could be a small bump in an otherwise smooth road to growth, but this is the first time we’ve seen any declining numbers associated with Google+.
Of course, Google hasn’t even opened the social network up to the public, or even profile pages to businesses. Then there’s the whole gaming thing. I’m going to go with this being a small bump.