---
title: Google+ fails the “like” test
url: https://www.grahamjones.co.uk/2012/blog/social/google-fails-like-test.html
date: 2012-06-28T09:20:06+00:00
modified: 2026-11-10T09:11:28+00:00
lang: en_GB
---

# Google+ fails the “like” test

It is now a [year since Google introduced](http://mashable.com/2012/06/28/google-plus-one-year-later/) its fifth stab at social networking, Google+. So, has it been the "Facebook Killer" it set out to be? Hardly. Facebook has added more people in the past year than Google+ has received in total interest. Google+ has had 170m people sign up for it in the past 12 months, but in that time Facebook has grown by 200m users. [Other interesting statistics](http://blog.comscore.com/2011/12/state_of_the_us_social_networking.html) reveal that each month, on average, people spend just 5-minutes on Google+ yet almost 7 hours on Facebook. Indeed, people spend considerably more time on Tumblr or Pinterest than on Google+.

This must be really bad news for Google. They have put their all into Google+, indeed 25% of the staff bonuses are now linked to the performance of Google+. So everyone has an incentive to make it work. Yet, clearly, it isn't really working.

There is one sector in which you will find Google+ fans, people who have ditched Facebook in favour of Google+. These are young men in the high-tech sector. They love Google+. The rest of us, well, we simply do not like it at all, the statistics suggest.

So why is that? All the pundits agree Google+ is better designed than Facebook, being cleaner and with more obvious navigation, clearer buttons and so on. Google has also pumped in massive marketing budget and included Google+ in its search engine ranking system, almost forcing website owners to use Google+. Yet in spite of all this Google+ users, on average, return to the site only once every 12 days.

What's going on? The answer is simple. Most people do not like it. Less than 7% of the entire online world uses it - almost 94% of web users completely ignore Google+. That compares with almost 45% of the online world using Facebook every day...! If people like something, they tend to use it regularly.

Google+ has several features which make it easy to unlike. Firstly, it is too pervasive. Throughout the Google network of sites, from the search engine to Gmail and beyond, Google+ lurks trying to grab your attention. It's rather like an annoying toddler poking you in the ribs every couple of minutes.

Secondly, in spite of its design simplicity, Google+ is rather complex to use compared with Facebook. Like so many other online companies Google - unusually - has gone for design over function. Yet it is function that wins the day in terms of likeability.

But more importantly in terms of being liked, Google+ has not listened. It has focused so much on itself, it has forgotten what the users really want - unless you are in that niche of young, male technology geeks who form a core of Google+ users. Hang on a minute - that sounds like Google itself.

Perhaps the fact that Google+ hasn't really succeeded is that it has committed that cardinal sin of business - internal focus and trying to outwit the competition, rather than focusing on the needs and requirements of the customer.

###### Related articles

- [Google+ Waiting For 'Hypergrowth', Partners With Flipboard](http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2185623/Google-Waiting-For-Hypergrowth-Partners-With-Flipboard) (searchenginewatch.com)
- [20 Reasons to Switch to Google+ \[INFOGRAPHIC\]](http://mashable.com/2012/05/31/google-plus-reasons-to-switch/) (mashable.com)