G+ now has 18 million users

Google+ is growing fast.

New data from Experian Hitwise shows that Google+ is growing fast.

If they are true, then Google+ plus gained a jaw-breaking eight million users since Google CEO Larry Page confirmed the Google+ user-base to be 10 million users in Google's 2011 Q2 Earnings conference call on July 14.

The web analytics firm has released its first set of data regarding Google’s new social network. While its data only extends to July 16, it provides a detailed picture into the numbers that are driving Google+’s growth.

Facebook on the other hand claims to have 750 million active users or about 732 million if the 18 million users mentioned migrated to Google+.
In recent polls conducted by The Christian Post, more than 40 percent of 10,000 people stated that they believe Google+ would dethrone Facebook as the biggest social network while the other 40 percent believed that Google+ and Facebook would co-exist.

"The following poll is an unofficial and unscientific poll aimed to measure how many Facebook users so far have definitely migrated to Google+."

Here are some of the most interesting stats from Experian Hitwise’s report:

• As of July 16, Google+ is the 42nd most-visited social networking site in the US and the 638th most-visited site on the web. 

• According to Hitwise, Google+ had 1.8 million total visits last week, an increase of 283% from the previous week. Google+ has grown by a whopping 821% from the week ending on July 2, the first week Google+ was made available. 

• 56% of Google+’s upstream traffic came from other Google properties last week, with 34% of that traffic coming from Google.com. And 37% of its upstream traffic came from search engines, while 21% of its traffic was driven by email.

• Google+ may not be as much of a sausagefest as some early estimates claimed. According to Hitwise, 57% of visits to Google+ were from males for the four weeks ending on July 16. That doesn’t mean that 57% of its users are male, but it’s a sign that previous estimates were off the mark.

• Google+ is dominated by young adults. Its biggest age group for the four weeks ending July 14 was the 25-34 age bracket, which accounted for 38.37% of all visits. The week before, the entire 18-34 age bracket made up just 38.11% of total visitors.

• Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco are the most dominant metropolitan areas driving traffic to Google+. Other areas with a higher proportion of visitors to Google+ than the general online population include Bowling Green, KY, Portland, OR and Bend, OR.

The truth of the matter is that none of these stats are official and Google+ is still very new, so it’s anybody’s guess as to how accurate Experian Hitwise’s actually are. Still, we think the company’s numbers make sense. While Google+ is gaining in popularity, it is still minuscule compared to Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Tagged or even MySpace.

Statistics source: Paul Allen 

Source: Mashable,