Google+ Hits 90 Million Users, 60 Percent Engage Daily

Google+ has reached the 90 million user mark worldwide, and CEO Larry Page says 60% of them engage on the site every day. That’s one of the lead facts that the company is pushing in its

Q4 earnings announcement that’s just out today.

Update: As described in our more recent story, No, Google+ Doesn’t Have A 60 Percent Engagement Rate, the 60 percent figure actually refers to how many Google+ users engage with any Google product.

Although the company’s overall financial numbers didn’t meet expectations, the Google+ number continues impressive growth and prompted CEO Larry Page to declare that he’s “super excited” about it in Google’s written statement:

“I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago. By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+ we will create amazing experiences across our services. I’m very excited about what we can do in 2012 – there are tremendous opportunities to help users and grow our business.”

That’s a huge jump — more than double the 40 million Google+ users that Page reported on the last earnings call in October. Facebook has 800 million users and Twitter recently reported having 100 million “active” users. But, as we’ve pointed out before, it’s difficult to compare user numbers between Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

User counts aren’t necessarily an indication of any site’s health — what matters is how much a site is used. And Page elaborated on that during the investors’ call, which is still ongoing:

1. more than 60 percent of Google+ users engage daily
   

2. more than 80 percent engage weekly
   

What’s not clear is how Google is defining an “engagement” with Google+ – just being logged in and looking at the stream? Checking notifications? Something else? During the investor call, Google’s Vic Gundotra posted a number of images, one of which referred to 60 percent and 80 percent signing in daily/weekly.

Still, the fact that Google+ accounts have more than doubled in the past three months is no doubt a positive sign for Google.

Google has been extremely active in promoting Google+ lately, using prominent TV commercials, integrating it with other Google products and, perhaps most importantly, making it extremely more visible on Google.com via the recently announced “Search, Plus Your World” feature.