Google+ is underperforming for newspapers trying to get online traffic and followers, according to Jon Mitchell, reporting on a Searchmetrics study. What the data "reveals most of all is that engagement on Google+ is still too low to send reliable social signals about a story to Google," writes Mitchell.
"Google's all-important social signal, the +1 button, does not even correspond to the number of Google+ followers for... major newspapers. If people are seeing stories from these papers on Google+, they either don't like them or they aren't bothering to tell Google."