Next time you login or go to your Google+ profile, don’t be surprised if you see a number showing your views! The number tells you how many times people have seen your profile or content either on your profile or in their stream.
Google+’s Chief Architect Yonatan Zunger announced this feature in a Google+ post on his profile. Yonatan wrote that he has been getting asked about the new view count number. He has also put the series of answers along with those questions on this post, they are:
He clarifies that this view count consists of total views on your profile, your posts, your photos, and your videos.
What is included in Views?
For your profile, when someone goes to view your profile page. For other things, it’s when they look at it — e.g., when one of your posts shows up on someone’s screen. (That’s because this is how most people read posts: showing up in a stream, without clicking on it explicitly) Looking at your hovercard doesn’t count.
Additionally, this view count also include number of +1s but only those +1s which your visitors would have to had to view before clicking the +1 button. (That means, this count does not include +1s that are given from other than Google+ profile sources eg. website or blog etc.)
How to turn off this View Count on Google+ profile
To hide the View Count from your Google+ profile, go to your Google+ profile settings page at http://plus.google.com/settings and find out a section called “Show how many times your profile and content have been viewed.” and uncheck the option.
Google+ personal branding
While there is a lot of chatter among the Google+ users as to why Google+ rolled this out and what will this be used for, we think this will help celebrities like sports, entertainment personalities, political personalities and other indiavidual brands. This will help them understand their reach on Google+, among their followers.
Your thoughts
What do you think of this new feature? Do you think this will help people build and measure their own reach on Google+ or do you think it is just another feature that people won’t care for? Let us know your thoughts in the comment box below.