Google+ has weathered its fair share of criticism since launching two years ago, some of it more deserved than others. But a new report shows it's not all bad news for Google's social platform.

Pluses and minuses

The report, supplied to Mashable by Nielsen, shows on average users spent six minutes and 47 seconds on Google+ in March this year, compared to six hours and 44 minutes on Facebook.

While this is a significant gap, the numbers mark an almost 50 per cent rise for Google+, which recorded a monthly visit average of three minutes and 30 seconds in February 2012.

Conversely, Facebook's figures are down from its previous average of seven hours and nine minutes in March 2012.

These figures do not include visits from mobile apps.

Mobile movement

Google+ has seen its fastest growth in mobile. Nielsen reports some 20 million unique visitors used the platform's Android and iPhone apps, marking a 238 per cent rise since March 2012. 

On the desktop, Google+'s monthly unique visits numbered 28 million, a rise of 63 per cent from March 2012.

For comparison, Facebook saw 99 million unique visits via mobile devices and 142.1 million unique visits to its desktop sites over the same period. Twitter enjoyed 29 million unique visits from their official app and 34 desktop visits.

Googlewhack

Google claims Nielsen's figures are far below the company's internal data, which seems fair considering Nielsen based its data on direct visits to plus.google.com and did not account for indirect visits via partner sites like YouTube and Gmail.

Whatever the true number, the signs are that Google+ is slowing gaining traction. Whether it will ever catch up to Twitter and Facebook is another matter.

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