Report: Those Searching For Google+ Are Younger & Have More Income Than Facebook Searchers

Aug 29, 2011 at 10:01pm ET by Greg Finn

In a recent study released by comScore, searcher demographics showed some striking differences between those looking for Google+ vs. those looking for Facebook in July.

Surprisingly, Facebook had a larger percentage of searchers over the age of 35, while Google+ trended younger. 34.2% of searchers looking for Google+ were under 35 years old and only 24% of Facebook searchers were under 35. In addition to the younger demographic, Google+ searchers skewed towards higher incomes. Facebook saw 22.8% of searchers with an income of above $100,000 a year, while Google+ had a 32.1% makeup.

ComScore also elaborated on the information used in this report:

Each example analyzes the demographics of searchers that used the branded terms for the month of July, and are based on head of household. The index baselines are the searcher demographics for the entire US search population. Available measures are Age, Income, Location (home/work), Region of the US, Household Size, and Presence of Children in the Household.

For more information, see the full comScore demographic report.

About The Author: Greg Finn is the Chief Marketing Officer for Cypress North, a company that specializes in social media and search marketing services and web-based application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 6+ years and specializes in Social Media Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn. See more articles by Greg Finn

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kenwork

Hey comScore; Why are you comparing facebook and google+ when google+ has been invite only for quite some time now.

Do this study after google+ has an open sign up policy for a year. This data is misleading and deceptive unless you state this fact and factor it into your research. It would be much more honest to do this evaluation after google+ is open for free sign up for at least 6 months…
Matt McGee

@Kenwork – I’m not an expert in searcher behavior by any means, but I think it’s safe to assume that most people who type “Facebook” or “Google+” into a search engine are already users of the service. That’s one of the oddities (IMO) about search for many years now — heavy navigational queries that really make you scratch your head. Like, “Google” being the most popular search query on Yahoo for years.

So, rather than type plus.google.com into their browser address bar, many current users just type “google+” into Google’s search box. That’s what I would assume is happening.
Zato Gibson

commenter kenwork wrote: “Do this study after google+ has an open sign up policy for a year. This data is misleading and deceptive unless you state this fact and factor it into your research. It would be much more honest to do this evaluation after google+ is open for free sign up for at least 6 months…”

Very good point. comScore seems to be in the propaganda business these days.
http://www.blissseo.com.au Bliss

I saw a tweet the other day that made me laugh quite a bit, it said, “If you quote Alexa or comScore you’re a moron!”