In just a couple of months, Google+ will no longer exist. The shutdown process is already underway with new accounts no longer being created and some elements of the channel starting to disappear. If you have an account are you prepared for what happens next?
If you created a Google account in the past you probably already have a Google+ account and maybe haven’t realised it. You can check if you have a Google+ account by logging in using your Google account details. If you can see a ‘ Join Google+’ button on the left-hand side then you haven’t got an existing profile.
Why is Google+ closing?
Google has made the decision to close Google+ due to low usage. Despite having 111 million ‘active profiles’ on Google+, 90% had never posted publicly on the platform. – Source. It’s no surprise that Google has decided to bring the curtain down on its social media channel that launched to much publicity and fanfare in June 2011.
It was supposed to be shut down in August 2019 but had been brought forward after a bug was discovered that gave apps permission to access non-public information.
When does Google+ shutdown?
If you are a Google+ user, then on the 2nd April, your Google+ profile will be deleted as well as any photos and videos that are stored in your Google+ archive. Any photos or videos you have stored in Google Photos are not affected.
If you have a profile and wish to download your data then Google has made this quite a simple process. You can find out how to do this here.
However, the functionality of Google+ is not completely dead. Hangouts will continue to exist as a standalone function (and hopefully will be improved to make the invitation process easier), and you can post status updates within Google My Business.
If you are not currently registered with Google My Business – do so now. We believe every business should make use of Google My Business to improve Google’s knowledge about their business and use posts to share products, promotions and events. Watch this video to learn how to create posts.
This video is one of the videos in our new Introduction to Google Website Tools e-learning course. As you may know, at Concise Training we are passionate about keeping our e-learning courses as up to date as we can and every 6 months we go through a major rewrite process – which has just been completed.
As part of this update, we have had to retire our Google+ course but we wanted to replace it with a course to help people use those Google tools we find useful for our own business. As such, our Introduction to Google Website Tools course includes 3 learning objects covering Google My Business, Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These aim to help you understand how to use the Google tools that are available to you free of charge and can be used to improve how your website appears in Google search and to understand what visitors do on your website when they find it.