14 DAY TRIAL // While plenty of people are quick to herald Google+'s demise, they have done so since shortly after it launched, it seems that Google's social network is growing steadily and that it's adding new users and getting existing ones to come back more often.
According to Hitwise data, the week ending November 12 was the third biggest for Google+ in history, in terms of total US visits. The two biggest weeks were the ones immediately following Google+'s public release, when everyone was allowed to create a profile.
"The growth represents a 5% increase versus the previous week and a 25% increase compared to a month ago," Hitwise explained.
"Traffic also increased 3% overall in terms of total US visits and the average visit time increased 15% in October vs. September 2011," it added.
Of course, Google+ debuted brand pages last week, which could have lead to the increase in traffic since users may have been curious to see the new pages while brands and organizations were eager to set up their Google+ profiles.
Whatever the case, traffic is growing, albeit not in a particularly spectacular way. Granted, September was a special month since that's when Google+ opened up. Much more revealing will be November's numbers versus October.
"Among the top ten referral sources, eight are Google properties and accounted for 73% off all upstream traffic last week, up from 65% during the peak week of Sept. 24, 2011," the report also said.
What's interesting is that Facebook is the third biggest traffic source for Google+, which is both encouraging and worrying for Google.
On the one hand, people are coming from the rival social network to Google+, on the other, Facebook is a bigger source than YouTube. The only other non-Google property in the top 10 traffic sources was Yahoo Mail.
Finally another encouraging figure for Google is that people are coming back to Google+ more often. Returning traffic grew 18 percent in the first two weeks of November compared to the same period in October. Overall, 74 percent of traffic to Google+ was from returning visitors, in the last week.