Despite increased membership and brand activity, Google+ users still spend just 3 minutes per month on the website.

ComScore recently told the Wall Street Journal that the average Google+ user spent 3 minutes on the website in January, which was by far the least among the major social platforms.

The market research firm detailed its findings to the WSJ, calling Google+ a “virtual ghost town.” The platform’s ongoing battle to become a leader in social has resulted in some interesting circumstances. While users are being more aggressive with the use of the +1 button throughout the web, they are not spending much time on the actual Google+ website.

Certain moves from Google in recent weeks were likely in response to lagging traffic. Most notably was the addition of the Share button on the Google.com homepage. The feature allows logged-in users to share content to their Google+ account directly from Google.com. However, this still has not helped the company generate much consistent traffic.

Comparatively, Google+ is by far the least visited of the major social networks included in comScore’s study. Facebook, for example, accounts for more than 400 minutes per month for the average user. Beyond that, Tumblr and Pinterest, two of the newest platforms measured, each result in 89 minutes per month. The primary commonality among these three platforms is their focus on visual content, which often helps improve engagement for social media marketing campaigns.

Twitter, interestingly, only generated 21 minutes per month for the average user. However, many Twitter users rely on various third-party applications, such as HootSuite or TweetDeck, to share their content. Google+ has released its API for integration on third-party apps.

Brafton recently reported that, despite limited activity, top brands using Google+ for social media marketing generated 1,400 percent more fans in January than in previous months. Still, it appears as though many users are not actively engaging with these brands on the platform as of yet.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.