Did Google Just Delete A Ton of Google+ Spam Accounts?

Here’s something interesting: it appears Google just deleted a ton of Google+ accounts (most likely spam accounts).

How can I tell?  Well, I have the Google +1 button installed on Google Chrome, so I can easily +1 any page on the Internet even if it doesn’t have a +1 button on it, and by default the Google Chrome +1 button extension will show you how many other people have +1’d the particular page you’re currently on.  I noticed late last night that the number of +1’s on Google.com had significantly dropped, and when I say significantly, I mean from more than 1 million +1’s to 170,000 +1’s as of right this moment (see screenshot).

At first I thought it was just some fluke, but then when I visited BestTechie I noticed the +1’s for our home page had also dropped.  As did the +1’s for TechCrunch, and I’m sure many other websites.

This makes you wonder out of those 400 million Google+ users (100 million of them active), how many of them were spammers?  It sure seems like a lot.  I mean, let’s just say Google.com had an even 1 million +1’s, and now it’s down to just 170k?  That’s a 83 percent drop over night.

Now this may be a slight stretch, but a sample size of 1 million +1’s seems big enough to me (plus Google.com is probably one of the most +1’d pages, if not the most +1’d): if you apply that same 83 percent to the 100 million active users, that means there are now just 17 million active Google+ users.  The reason why I’m including the spam accounts in the active Google+ users is because I think it’s probably safe to consider +1’ing pages a measurement of activity.

So what this comes down to is it’s either a massive screw up by Google and their +1 counts are messed up or they deleted a ton of spam accounts.

Have you noticed a decrease in +1’s on your website?

Update: Looks like it was just a massive loss of +1’s after all.  It appears the +1’s are back to the previous numbers.