Number of Google Plus Pages counts how many legacy plus.google.com page links appear in a page’s rendered HTML, returning a whole number. It counts matching URL text — not distinct, verified, or active social profiles — and because Google Plus was shut down in 2019, any match is almost always an obsolete link.
| Factor ID | RG-SOC-024 |
|---|---|
| Family | Social Links |
| Measurement | Count |
| Measured zone | Rendered body HTML with scripts removed |
What it measures
This factor counts legacy Google Plus page URLs that carry a word-or-hyphen identifier. It reports how many of those links the page still exposes in its rendered body HTML, giving you a simple tally of surviving references to a platform Google retired in 2019.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear runs a case-insensitive regular-expression scan over the rendered body HTML (with scripts removed) for the plus.google.com/<identifier> form, where the identifier is a run of word characters or hyphens. It returns the number of matches found — the raw count of matching URL strings, not a de-duplicated list of profiles.
What RankGear looks for
https://plus.google.com/+RankGear
https://plus.google.com/communities-team
Pattern (case-insensitive): plus.google.com/[\w-]+How to optimize it
Remove obsolete Google Plus page links unless you are intentionally preserving them as historical content. Because the underlying platform no longer exists, a non-zero count usually points to stale footer icons, author bio blocks, or schema fragments worth cleaning up. Treat the number as a structural observation about link hygiene, not as a target to raise — adding more social links is not evidence of better rankings.
Important considerations
- This counts matching URL text, not distinct, verified, active social profiles or successful shares.
- Repeated matches are counted separately, so the same link appearing twice adds two to the count.
- The detector follows one specific legacy URL shape, so other valid URL forms may not count and look-alike text may count.
- Treat this as a structural observation, not evidence that adding more social links improves rankings. A factor tracks how a page relates to others in a measured result set; it does not by itself cause or guarantee a position.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.