Updated: Hello new visitor. Back in October of 2018, I wrote about how Google Plus was going to go away, and the first week of February 2019 over a thousand visitors have landed on this post. And there have been lots of questions. So if that’s you, hi! Welcome! Here’s what you need to know.
Google Plus is Google’s attempt at a social network. You can see our Google Plus page here. It’s a place where you could share status updates, photos, links, and other things and read and follow others as well. It never really caught on like Facebook and Twitter, so it’s going to be shut down for regular consumers this April.
Google Plus does not refer to your Gmail account, your Google Drive, YouTube, Google Analytics or any other Google service. It’s just referring to the social network. Everything else will remain the same.
Do you use Google Plus? Have you? Were you thinking about it? The time has come and gone, because Google announced recently that it won’t be around much longer. The announcement was made October 8, 2018 that Google Plus will no longer be a social network for consumers.
Why is Google Plus going away?
It all started with a security glitch that possibly exposed up to 500,000 users’ data between 2015-2018. Google said they immediately fixed the bug, and claims there’s no evidence that the glitch was exploited by those who had access. Some of the potential data exposed included names, email addresses, occupations, birthdays, gender and photos.
Furthermore, Google Plus has never been able to pick up steam and really compete in the social network market like Facebook and Twitter. The lofty goals of creating a network to rival what Facebook was already doing never panned out, and users haven’t flocked to the service. While the social networks closure was sparked by the security breach, it’s low usage among users helped spur Google to make the call to shut it down.
What does this mean for you?
It depends. Google Plus isn’t shutting down tomorrow, they have a ten month plan in place to wind down the network. If you’ve been a business and been publishing content on Google Plus over the years, you may have seen some influence in SERPs, as Google was actively pushing folks to publish on their platform to increase use and engagement. That boost will disappear once Google plus is gone and will no longer be a ranking factor. Ultimately, that extra signal was one among many and may or may not have had a significant impact on your search engine placement.
What should you do now?
If you haven’t heard about Google Posts, I would definitely start using it. This fun little feature allows you to add posts to your Google My Business listing, which will show up with your listing for a week at a time. These posts promote your blog, business, specials and events when your local listing shows up in the search results.
Honestly, I don’t think many of us are going to miss Google plus all that much. Surely, there will be something new on the horizon to take it’s place before too long.
Amy Masson
Amy is the co-owner, developer, and website strategist for Sumy Designs. She's been making websites with WordPress since 2006 and is passionate about making sure websites are as functional as they are beautiful.
My morher has had a blog since 2010 with the extension blogspot.com. We got a message that the blog would be going away and we should download anything we want to save. The wording of the message was rather confusing but that was the gist of it. So, the blog is going away and can never be accessed again?
Without seeing the email, it’s hard to say. Blogger isn’t going away, but they could be removing blogs that are no longer being updated, so maybe that’s it.
Thank you! I was able to post a reply to a follower’s comment on the blog so maybe it’s not going away. Hope not.
How do I copy videos and photos from Google+ to my Google drive? I am not sure how or why I have used Google+, I think I published videos as youtube to share with family however the same videos are not in my google drive.
Any videos you shared will have come from a video streaming source like YouTube, so the videos should still be hosted elsewhere, not hosted on Google Plus.
does this mean google photos is going away
Nope, all your other Google services are still here, it’s just the Google social network that’s going.
I loved Google + sorry to see it go.
I’m sad that Google+ is shutting down.I love Google+ and when I saw the announcements,I can’t believe it.I had no other choice but to delete my posts at Google+ and I might not be able to see Google+ again after the two months are up.
R.I.P Google+.I love you so much and I’ll miss you forever in a day:(
I didn’t use Google plus as a social media platform but it was a huge source of traffic for blogs but now that it is gone, my blog had a a huge downfall in traffic.
Mine is an entertainment blog. Will Google Post be beneficial for this kind of niche?
What’s the goal of your blog? Google Posts is most beneficial for local businesses who have some kind of goods or services to offer.
will the 1-5 star goole plus ratings for businesses disappear too?
The reviews for businesses are part of Google My Business, and not Google Plus, so they are staying.
Will i lose my youtube hangouts and google account in general
No, it’ just Google Plus. Everything else is staying.
does this also mean google drive what should I do about photos
Google Drive is fine.
What about message +. That’s how I do text messages. Is that going anywhere?
I’m not sure.
Just out of curiosty ok, if it happends what other sites can down load photos and videos, any one can recommended for me pls
Do you mean if other sites are hotlinking to photos hosted on Google Plus? Those hotlinks won’t work anymore after Google Plus does away.
I don’t Have a Business I Use Google Socially so I am Screwed
Sorry! There are plenty of social networks to switch to.
Will that include my gmail.com account? Should I go ahead and change my email addresses that are gmail.com account?
Gmail isn’t going anywhere.
Thank God Gmail is not going away!!
What about hangouts?
I love Google plus by the way. So sad
Google Hangouts is shutting down for G Suite customers in October 2019. It will be replaced by Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet.
Google originally had Google Blog Spot and eventually that was shut down. Subsequently, came Google Plus and now that is shutting down on April 2, 2019. From hereon in, I will never participate in anything Google offers as it pertains to Social Media.
Blogspot is still alive and well.
Gmail in every sense is the best in most ways. No issues with emails, calenders etc. So I’m glad it’s here to stay:-)
I wish more companies can wake up and utilise Gmail for business.
its the first social media website that i used . and obviously there are so many memories which i can never forget ofcourse so ……………….
Is gmail affected
No.