- FT leads way with 372,159 followers, followed by Guardian and Independent
- No Google+ profiles for The Times, The Sun, Daily Express and Daily Star
- Mail Online received the most +1 recommendations
The Financial Times is the most followed UK national newspaper on the Google+ social network but stories from Mail Online and the Telegraph websites are the most frequently recommended, according to new research.
Search and social analytics company Searchmetrics examined the visibility of 13 UK national newspapers on Google+, which now claims to have more than 100m users.
Nine of the thirteen newspapers – FT.com, Guardian.co.uk, Independent.co.uk, Mail Online, Telegraph.co.uk, Mirror.co.uk, Scotsman.com, DailyRecord.co.uk and HeraldScotland.com – had Google+ accounts at 19 March with a combined total of 544,545 followers.
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No official pages could be found for The Times, The Sun, Daily Express and Daily Star.
The combined number of followers for the 13 titles on Facebook – where all thirteen have profiles – is 1,284,674, according to the study.
FT.com led the way with 372,159 followers (or having the newspaper's page in their Google+ ‘circles'), followed by The Guardian with 75,255 followers and The Independent in with 60,195.
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But weekly data from Searchmetrics showed stories and content from Mail Online received the most +1 recommendations (content is recommended by clicking the Google+ ‘+1' button similar to the Facebook ‘like') with 10,493 +1s a week on average.
In second place was the Telegraph with 5,822 +1s a week and in third was the Guardian with 3,367+1s a week. The Financial Times averaged just 670 +1s a week, though was said to be linked to its paywall restrictions.
Here is the full breakdown of Google+ figures
Number of Google+ followers, average +1s per week
- FT.com: 372,159; 674
- Guardian.co.uk: 75,255; 3,367
- Independent.co.uk: 60,195; 2,812
- Dailymail.co.uk: 35,490; 10,493
- Telegraph.co.uk: 1,087; 5,822
- Mirror.co.uk: 149; 211
- Scotsman.com: 110; 69
- DailyRecord.co.uk: 99; 22
- HeraldScotland.com: 1 (recently constructed page) 28
- TheTimes.co.uk: No Google+ page found; 35
- TheSun.co.uk: No Google+ page found; 827
- Express.co.uk: No Google+ page found; 10
- DailyStar.co.uk: No Google+ page found; 5
*Metro.co.uk, which was not included in the original study, has 2,337 Google+ followers. +1s figures are unavailable.
Searchmetrics founder Marcus Tober said: 'Google+ is still a relatively young social network but Google is very positive about its future and we're already seeing a large number of people on the site, so it's important for newspapers and other big brands to get in early and have a strong presence on the network.
"Not only is having content shared or recommended on social networks such as Google+ a valuable way of generating traffic, but it is likely to be having an impact on how your website pages rank and are positioned in search results.
'Google has already started showing personalised results – which incorporate online content that people's Google+ followers have recommended – within search results. And it's likely that it will be looking at using the insights it gets from Google+ data to determine and shape search results in other ways,'added Tober.
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