Google+ market share grows 1,269% in one week

Website traffic analysis firm Experian Hitwise said Tuesday that traffic to Google+ grew some 1,269 percent from the week ending September 17 to the week ending September 24. This was good enough to catapult the site from the 54th most visited site in the Social Networking and Forums category to 8th in just one week.

Research director Heather Dougherty said Hitwise's analysis indicated Google+ had nearly 15 million total US visits in the last week alone, its first since opening up to the public. She also said the company's analysis indicates that a large portion of the services users still remain early adopters.

The company has some funny names it uses to describe the different categories of users it follows across the sites it tracks called Mosaic. Regardless, these are still the influencers and technologically savvy who were the first to jump on board when Google+ launched in late July.

"In comparison to the online population, Google + continued to over-index for and win a high share of its visits from Mosaic USA 2011 Types which contain 'Influencers,' 'Early Adopters' and the internet-savvy, like 'Bohemian Groove,' 'Gotham Blend' and 'Progressive Potpourri;' this indicates that 'Early Adopters' still account for a large share of Google+’s traffic," Dougherty writes.

However, the firm noted that the audience profile of Google+ was shifting to lower and middle-income groups, which likely indicates that the social network is beginning to move past the early adopter phase of its growth.