Strange +1 Decrease On Google+ Brand Pages

Have you noticed a drastic drop in your Google+ brand page +1 numbers? You aren’t alone.

This morning while reviewing our social channels, we noticed a 384,000 drop in Search Engine Land’s +1 numbers that appear below the logo. Yesterday, it was over 409,000 – today only 25,000. Luckily, the number of people and pages who have you in circles, a little lower on the right side of your profile, is still at 366,000. However, 25,000 plus 366,000 still don’t add up to 409,000. So, what’s going on?

We checked with our contact at Google, who confirmed that this is a known issue, and there is something going on with the way the numbers are counted and combined, and it should be resolved soon. Unfortunately, as of November 2012, we can no longer see +1 metrics in Webmaster Tools, so we have to sit tight and see if the numbers bounce back.

In the past hour, the Marketing Land Google+ page has been affected, decreasing from over 14,000 to 2,874.

Have you seen fluctuations on the brand pages you manage?

UPDATE 1:58 PM EST: +1 metrics to brand pages seem to have returned to normal for many, it seems that the glitch was short-lived.

About The Author

Monica Wright

Monica Wright serves as Vice President of Audience Engagement for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. With over 15 years of experience in online publishing, content marketing and audience development for media companies, she is focused on content consumption and measuring user engagement on both sites across multiple platforms including desktop, mobile, social and email. In addition, she serves as a program coordinator for the SMX conference series, produced by parent company Third Door Media, publisher of Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. You can find Monica on Twitter @monicawright, LinkedIn and Google+.