It’s getting close to the zero hour for Google+ as a social network. As of August 31st, 2019 it will cease to exist. Although Google announced the shut down last October, I’m a bit surprised that more people aren’t aware of it.
This lack of awareness likely goes hand in hand with the statistic I read recently about Google+ traffic: more than 90% of it was from user sessions lasting 5 seconds or less! That typically correlates strongly to a high bounce rate (defined as one page view with no clicks on the page), which is caused by lack of interest in the content. Not much of a engaging social experience!
What should SMB’s be doing now if they had a Google+ page? A few housekeeping items come to mind: 1) make sure to remove all desirable content you have on your Google+ page and make sure it’s on another active social network or your website. 2) remove the links to your Google+ content (i.e. off of your website header / footer). 3) remove references to it in your email nurturing and lead generation campaigns, and templates in your marketing portal and 4) remove it from any of your directory listing services, locator services, etc.
Lastly you can relish in the fact that even gigantic internet companies like Google (Alphabet) and Amazon have major failures too. Fire phone anyone? Dash button? Google Compare?