Last Week Was Google+'s Third-Biggest Yet for Traffic [STUDY]

[img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-64.png" caption="" credit="" alt=""]Google's addition of brand pages to Google+ seems to have helped the site's traffic. According to Hitwise, the week was the fledgling social network's third-biggest yet in terms of U.S. traffic with 6.8 million visits.

The two biggest weeks took place in late September, right after Google opened the network publicly. Parsing the numbers, Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise, found the week ending Nov. 12, was also a 25% improvement over a month prior and 5% more than the week before. Brand pages weren't the only additions to Google+ last week. The company also introduced other enhancements, including a +1 button for Google Image searches.

Dougherty noted that eight of the 10 top referrers to Google+ were Google properties. Facebook, however, was number three. (Yahoo Mail was the other non-Google property, at number eight.)

In a positive sign for Google+, traffic from returning visitors is also up. The share of returning visitors rose 18% if you compare an average of the first two weeks of November vs. the comparable period in October. Hitwise cautions, however, that the figures don't include traffic from Google's Notification Bar or from mobile sources.

Despite the enthusiasm over Google+ brand pages, some have complained that Google's verification system needs to be improved. As if to prove the point, a Google+ profile lampooning Bank of America popped up last week. The page has been taken down.