Google+ and Top Brand Engagement: My Own Small Study

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While the rest of the world is obsessed with Facebook's IPO, I thought I might be a contrarian and focus on Google+. At times, I have felt as if Google and others share G+ data and analysis not to enlighten but to convince. When Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president for engineering, says that Google+ has 100 million monthly active users (or MAUs) compared to Facebook's 901 million MAUs, I find myself wanting to see the data and dig into methodology, because assertions such as this do not always meet my "gut check."

Google+ data seems to come in one of two flavors--either statistics that support the Google-Plus-is-a-ghost-town argument or figures that lead to headlines such as "Google+ brand pages seeing adoption, engagement growth." The truth is certainly somewhere in between, but I have to say the more sober numbers and analysis seem to have a greater ring of truth.

A recent study of brand pages on G+ furnished optimistic findings such as:

• 64% of the Interbrand Top 100 now have an active Google+ Brand page.
• 22% of the brands now have circler counts over 100,000, up from 13%.
• More brands are posting more frequently: 43% are posting over 3X a week (up from 15% in February).

The folks behind the study offer services to help brands evaluate and improve their Google+ brand presence, which means they have a horse in the race. That does not mean their data is inaccurate, of course--in fact, I am sure the data is factual--but are the analysis and findings complete and thorough?  Do conclusions such as these help marketers and social professionals evaluate the importance of G+, or do they subtly encourage brand adoption of G+ (and, by extension, adoption of the study sponsor's services)?

At a glance, the study seems to imply that brands are beginning to flock to G+, but even without doing any independent research, it seems there is a less glowing way to consider the same data. For example, while 64% of the top 100 brands have an active Google+ page today, 61% of them already had their page one month after G+ launched, so there has been almost no additional adoption in the past six months. And while the number of brands with 100,000 fans is up almost 75% in three months, two-thirds of the top 100 brands in the world have fewer than 5,000 "circlers" on G+. (To put that into perspective, AJ Bombers, a locally owned burger joint in Milwaukee, WI, is connected to more people on Facebook than the vast majority of top 100 worldwide brands are connected to on Google Plus.)

I thought I would do my own small examination of the engagement enjoyed by the top ten brands on Interbrand's list. Here is what I found comparing the Facebook and Google Plus presence and engagement of the ten most valuable brands in the world:

Brand	Facebook Fans	Google+ Circlers		# of FB Posts (4/24 - 30)	# of G+ Posts (4/24 - 30)		Avg # of FB Likes/Post (4/24 - 30)	Avg # of G+ +1s/Post (4/24 - 30)
Coca-Cola FB, G+	41,943,732	523,783		2*	3		5,637	44
Microsoft FB, G+	1,779,336	202		10	0		522	NA
Google FB, G+	9,586,681	594,677		6	17		1890	323
GE FB, G+	313,473	2,004		7	5		148	7
McDonalds  FB, G+	19,680,889	10,198		7	0		4,388	NA
Intel FB, G+	10,165,230	374,339		6	4		7,295	68
IBM FB, G+	119,648	5,745		5	0		138	NA
Apple FB, G+	6,240,280	NA		NA	NA		NA	NA
Disney FB, G+	35,650,607	NA		5	NA		32,404	NA
HP FB, G+	1,804,691	190,109		6	5		238	11

* Coke's Facebook page didn't seem to be working like other Facebook pages when I tested it. I had great difficulties getting older posts to load, so I'm not certain this is an accurate number.

In order to compare the number of fans/circlers and likes/+1s on an apples-to-apples basis, I computed averages based only on the brands that are actively maintaining a presence in both social networks. I have noted the current averages in the chart below.

Brand	Facebook Fans	Google+ Circlers		# of FB Posts (4/24 - 30)	# of G+ Posts (4/24 - 30)		Avg # of FB Likes/Post (4/24 - 30)	Avg # of G+ +1s/Post (4/24 - 30)
Coca-Cola	41,943,732	523,783		2*	3		5,637	44
Google	9,586,681	594,677		6	17		1890	323
GE	313,473	2,004		7	5		148	7
Intel	10,165,230	374,339		6	4		7,295	68
HP	1,804,691	190,109		6	5		238	11
Average	12,762,761	336,982					3,042	91
	+3,687%						+3,257%

Of note is that:

• Fifty percent of the world's top ten brands are absent from Google+, while nine are present on Facebook. Apple is the lone holdout on both platforms.
   
• The activity on G+ brand pages is much less than would be expected, based on Google+'s and Facebook's Monthly Active Users. With Facebook at 901 million MAUs and Google at 100 million MAUs, one would expect brand pages on Facebook to have 800% more activity than on G+; instead, the brands present in both social networks have almost 3700% more fans/circlers and over 3200% more likes/+1s on Facebook than Google Plus. What would cause a brand's social graph and engagement to be much less than expected on Google+ compared to Facebook? The discrepancy is not due to a lack of activity on the part of brands--the number of posts made by brands to both platforms is quite similar. There are three possible explanations, and I suspect all three may be correct to one extent or another: G+ users are significantly less interested in engaging with brands on the social network; those who use G+ are far less active than the folks who use Facebook; and the number of G+ MAUs has been exaggerated. (Much has been written about how Google counts as an active user any Google+ registrant who uses Google services such as YouTube or Search when they're logged in, which would seem to exaggerate the number of active and actual users of Google+.)
   
• Perhaps most telling is this: Google gets substantially greater engagement with its brand page on Facebook than its brand page on its own social network. Despite posting significantly more content to G+, Google's Facebook presence has 1500% more connections to consumers and its posts receive almost 500% more engagement on Facebook than G+.

My own small evaluation of the top ten brands is not the only sign that Google+ is failing to get wind under its wings. In recent weeks:

• An RJMetrics analysis found that the average post on Google Plus receives just 0.77 +1s, 0.54 replies and 0.17 reshares.
   
• The same study found that 30 percent of users who make a public post on G+ never make another. Even after making five public posts, there is still a 15% dropoff before the sixth post.
   
• A Nielsen study found that over 70% of US moms who went online in March visited Facebook. The study also lists percentages for Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress and Tumblr, but the study omits Google+. It is hard to imagine that if moms were visiting G+ in any significant numbers that Nielsen would have excluded Google+ from this study.
   
• Janrain reported that Facebook is approaching 50% penetration among social login services. As recently as 18 months ago, Google held a tremendous advantage as the social login of choice among consumers, but today 45% of consumers use their Facebook accounts to log into third-party sites and only 30% use their Google credentials to do so.
   
• A recent Pew Internet study found that 73% of search users said they would not be okay with a search engine keeping track of their searches and using that information to personalize future search results because they feel it is an invasion of privacy. The idea of search as a social signal is a core tenet of Google's social strategy, but it seems few consumers are comfortable with the concept.
   
• Experian Hitwise recently tweeted that G+ experienced traffic growth of 5% from March to April 2012, which sounds pretty impressive until you consider the same company reported 27% traffic growth from February to March and a 55% month-to-month growth rate in late 2011. It seems G+'s adoption is decelerating rapidly less than a year after its September 2011 launch.

I am not trying to pile on Google Plus, but I would like more transparency from Google and others when it comes to data about G+ usage, engagement and growth. As a social media leader at a Fortune 500 firm, I must evaluate the benefits of dedicating resources to maintain a presence on Google Plus, and I would like to be armed with real data to make the right decision. For now, our choice about Google+ is informed by the fact that our brand has a mere 230 +1s on G+ , 0.1% of our total fan count on Facebook.

Perhaps Google+ will someday succeed at becoming a major social network, social layer, or whatever other social strategy Google chooses to pursue. For now, it seems to remain a niche social network with little engagement and stagnating growth. I am happy to proven wrong, but it is going to take thorough, accurate and transparent G+ data to do so--something in short supply at the current time.