Google+ Traffic Plummeted Since Going Live

Four weeks later, traffic on the new social network returns to about where it was before going public.

When Google+ went live on Sept. 20, the new social network drew an avalanche of visitors that helped it garner more than 25 million users. However, since then, Google+ has lost about 60 per cent of that traffic, returning to the level of activity it usually had while in its beta version. Industry analysts conclude that while a lot of people might have been intrigued by a new competitor for Facebook at first, few saw a good reason for sticking around, especially since many of Google+'s innovations, notably the Circles application, have since been adopted by Facebook. There was bound to be a surge upon the network's launch, but the precipitous decline in traffic on Google+ makes its challenges in rivaling Facebook, which is steadily approaching one billion users, that much clearer. At least it's still doing a lot better than Google Wave and Google Buzz, though.