So it is confirmed now that Google+ is shutting down in April 2019. Google already announced about this big change in December 2018. The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ will take a few months. Some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted.
Following are some of the changes users may experience with Google+ shutdown:
- Communities outside your domain without at least one G Suite owner will be deleted. Also, your users will no longer be able to create public communities outside your domain.
- Google+ pages, events, and the Google+ profile field for “tagline” will be deleted for both G Suite and consumer users.
- Previously, upon G Suite customer cancellation, certain customers (e.g., edu customers) could continue to use Google+. Going forward, upon cancellation of G Suite, all G Suite customers’ content will be flagged for deletion.
- Content from consumer Google+ accounts will be deleted. Consumer users will also be removed from your circles and communities.
- For additional changes to Google+ features such as collections, circles, search, vanity URLs, and commenting in Blogger and other sites.
So What you can as SEO?
- A new version of the Google+ Android app will be released on February 22, 2019. Update the Google+ Android app before March 7, 2019 to continue using Google+ on their mobile devices. Old versions of the app will no longer be supported.
- If your users own or moderate a community outside your domain and there are consumer contributions that they would like to keep, they should download and save them before April 2019. If they download the data now, they will get links to community posts. Starting early March 2019, they will also be able to download the author, body, and photos for every community post in a public community.
- Google+ pages and events will be deleted for both paid and free users if there is content your users would like to keep, they should download and save it before April 2019. If they would like to keep their Google+ tagline, please have them download and save their Profile data.
- Google+ gadgets in classic Google Sites will no longer work starting March 7, 2019, so you and your users may want to remove them. Google+ embeds in the new Google Sites will continue to work.
- If your users opted in to the Google Play Services Public Beta Program, they may experience issues using Google apps like Gmail and Hangouts as shutting down beings for consumers. To avoid any interruption in service, leave the Beta Program.
Few major effects on Blogger.com
Following the announcement of Google+ API deprecation scheduled for March 2019, a number of changes will be made to Blogger’s Google+ integration on 4 February 2019.
- Google+ widgets: Support for the '+1 Button', 'Google+ Followers' and 'Google+ Badge' widgets in Layout will no longer be available. All instances of these widgets will be removed from your blog.
- +1 buttons: The +1/G+ buttons and Google+ share links below blog posts and in the navigation bar will be removed.
- Please note that if you have a custom template that includes Google+ features, you may need to update your template.
- Google+ Comments: Support for Google+ comments will be turned down, and all blogs using Google+ comments will be reverted back to using Blogger comments. Unfortunately, comments posted as Google+ comments cannot be migrated to Blogger and will no longer appear on your blog. '
