Google+ heading for irrelevance

According to this site's logs, which may not be the last word in accuracy but hear me out, Google+ didn’t refer a single visitor yesterday.

There have been a total of eight Google+ referrals in the past seven days. The site’s lifetime statistics, show there have been a total of around 1000 referrals Google+ from 250,000 visits.

The site gets 16 Twitter referrals for every Google+ one. Reddit and Stumbleupon do better than Google+. Facebook does slightly worse, but I barely spend any time there and certainly don't post any links. Yet that's right, not positing links on Facebook is almost as effective as posting them to Google+.

To be fair, this site was hosted elsewhere during Google+ heyday.

Google+ glory years are long gone

The glory years were 2011 when Google’s social networking site first got moving and 2012 when, momentarily, Google+ looked like it may challenge Facebook. I remember days when 100 or so visitors would roll in through these doors from a link on Google+.

That didn't last long.

Yet, it’s clear the numbers have fallen from a steady stream to a trickle. It’s not for want of trying. There’s a better class of comment on Google+ and it attracts a distinctly different audience from other social networking sites. Google+ users are more engaged and less spammy.

At one point I looked at integrating my comments with Google+, but that was never going to be simple. And anyway, it's never a good idea to have any part of your site dependent on someone else's service.