Google+ has received a lot of attention lately for its growth. But despite high Circle counts, new data suggests that the social network’s visitors aren’t staying long enough to do much else.

According to comScore, the average Google+ user only spends about three minutes per month on the network compared to Facebook, which averages 405 minutes per month. What’s worse is that even MySpace — which hasn’t been a major player since the early 2000′s — has beaten Google+ with its users averaging eight minutes per month.

The search giant has integrated Google+ into many of its products, which some people might view as a ploy to force sign-ups. However, Google remains confident amidst these findings.

“The reality that Google+ is much more than a destination site makes it exceedingly hard for any third-party research firm to monitor or measure its performance,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. “Google thinks about the service not as a site but as a deepening of its relationship to billions of existing users who are already committed to Google’s services like Search, YouTube, Android, etc. By this measure, engagement is already enormous.”

Some of Google+’s power users have taken to status updates and tweets defending the site’s activity and cautioning brands not to ignore the platform.

Although some might think that Google has failed to capture the interest of users, Google+ is still very new compared to social veterans like Facebook and Twitter. Despite its age, engagement on every social network is different and many individuals — including brands — are still feeling it out.

[Via: VentureBeat, Image credit: Wikimania2009]