Growth to Google+ has slowed, new data from Experian Hitwise shows.
People are spending less time on the site. For the week that ended Aug. 27, users spent an average of five minutes and 47 seconds on the site. Although that's a four percent increase from the previous week, users were spending more time on the site last month. Hitwise says the amount of time spent on G+ peaked in July at five minutes 50 seconds.
Traffic to the site has also diminished. Hitwise says U.S. visits dropped 5.5 percent to 1.16 million in the week that ended Aug. 27. One week prior, traffic had increased by a slim 2.6 percent. By contrast, Google+ saw a 283 percent increase in visits the week that ended July 16.
However, there is to a caveat to this data. Hitwise doesn’t take into account traffic to Google+’s iOS and Android apps and it ignores activity in the drop-down notification menu in the browser.
Stats aside, it’s early to make predictions about the service, which is still open by invitation only.
“Google says this is a limited field trial,” Garnter analyst Michael Gartenberg told Bloomberg. “Early reactions from people who have used the service seem very, very positive. But we’re talking about a service that hasn’t been widely opened up, that most consumers can’t get access to.”
Google’s burgeoning social network only launched two months ago, and while it’s picked up an estimated 25 million accounts, it could be fighting an uphill battle against Facebook, which boasts more than 750 million users.
But it’s possible that these early traffic reports don’t even matter. The declines reported by Hitwise are slight, and traffic stats could even out as the initial excitement over the site wears off. Google itself has yet to release any official stats outside of CEO Larry Page’s confirmation in mid-July that the site had added 10 million accounts.
Reps from neither Google nor Hitwise could not be reached for comment.