Google+ is dead

Google+ is shutting down. Google announced last Monday that it was officially shutting down the platform for consumers. The process will be concluded in ten months.

Low engagement

The final decision has been taken by Google after a bug was discovered in March. The internal system found a security glitch that exposed 500 thousand Google Plus users’ data. The company didn’t share this information in the last months, maybe because it was scared to create a news scandal like Facebook did with Cambridge Analytica.

To explain this decision, Google said in its blog post that it currently sees low usage and engagement, with 90 percent of interactions lasting less than five seconds. It also said the enterprise version of the service will remain open for office workers who use it for internal discussions.

Competitor

Google Plus rolled out in 2011 as a competitor to the rising social platforms of Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. It tied in a strong SEO capability for publishers to include the social platform’s +1 button on their sites so you could share their content to your Circles. None of this worked. After the shocking news, the big question in the SEO community has been: how will it impact SEO and SEOs?

The truth is, it won’t impact SEOs all that much. The platform has very little interaction in search or the search community. It doesn’t impact rankings, it doesn’t influence personalization anymore and it doesn’t impact anything around authors or content.