It seems that whatever Google takes on is poised for success, sooner or later. The truth is that Google represents such a huge threat that it pushes competitors to become more innovative and better performing. In the end, it is really just a matter of time, until Google catches up. It is the case of Google+, which in December scored traffic up by 55 percent.
Such a boost in traffic spells trouble for Facebook, as its competitor is catching up faster than expected. According to data from Experian Hitwise, “Google+ total U.S. visits reach more than 49 million in December -11, biggest month to date”.
Basically, the traffic spike accounts for a 55 percent increase from November 2011. Back then, Hitwise said that Google+ had its third largest week of traffic for the week ending November 12, spelling out a 25 percent increase in site traffic since October.
With the analysis, Hitwise incorporated a chart which shows Google+’ evolution since its release. A short glimpse at the chart shows that since June and August, when Google+ was in closed beta and had below 10 million users, in September it boosted to 25 million. Two month slater it reached the 30 million mark and in December it moved toward 50 million.
In December, analyst Paul Allen, released estimates saying that Google+ had more than 62 million users as of December 25. As reported by his calculations, Google+ could reach more than 100 million by the end of February and over 400 million by the end of this year.
What’s Google+’ key of success? Well, according to the service’s founders, Google+ benefits from its widespread integration across all the other services Google offers. All in all, this is a huge edge that Google enjoys, since neither Facebook nor Twitter can offer such an experience.
Although all these estimates are giving nightmares Facebook’s and Twitter’s developers and executives, the truth is that Google+ has still a long way to go. A report published by Nielsen shows that Facebook has 137,644 unique U.S. visitors per month and thus, it enjoys, the status of the second most visited website in the world.
