Is the Google+ Deadpool Inevitable?

Social sharing platform Shareaholic has released its annual Social Media Traffic Report. The results, if you're familiar with the performance of your existing traffic sources, likely will not surprise you. 

Shareaholic examined 13 months of data from its 200,000 active publishers (the total reach of these publishers exceeded more than 250 million unique monthly visitors on average). The platform tracked eight of the most popular social media platforms to see how they were driving traffic. 

- THE POSITIVES: Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter are dominating, accounting for 15.22 percent of overall website traffic for Shareaholic users. The three networks are also growing rapidly (Facebook - 58 percent, Pinterest - 66 percent, and Twitter 54 percent). 

- THE NEGATIVES: YouTube and LinkedIn are gaining share of overall traffic, increasing the share of overall traffic sent to publishers 52.86 percent and 34.51 percent respectively. Reddit and Stumbleupon (despite now claiming profitability) referrals are declining - dropping 35 percent and 27 percent respectively. 

When it comes to Google+, Shareaholic found that while the platform referred a "fair number of visits to online publishers last month, it is hardly a leading referral source." Google+ referred just 0.04 percent of overall traffic. While the digital deadpool is anything but inevitable for the platform, digital marketers may be tiring of the platform's promise and anxious to see its potential.