You may have thought Google+ had quietly slipped quietly off the radar in recent months but rather than dying a slow death it appears to have been amassing a dedicated fanbase – in the US at least.

Google+ has surprised everyone including, quite possibly, itself by rising to the top of the American Consumer Satisfaction Index 2017 – an email survey of 4,978 social networkers, smashing titans like Twitter and Facebook into sixth and seventh spot respectively.

Largely dismissed since its inception as a superfluous channel alongside all conquering juggernauts such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram the service has faded from view since its 2011 launch despite a brief flurry of initial interest.

While most have now moved on it seems that the service has found a second calling as a host of community pages, with 111m users now logging in for that very purpose according to the latest survey by Forbes. These numbers elevate Google+ to around a third the size of Twitter or a sixth of the scale of Facebook within that particular niche.

Ignored by the rest of the world, the service has been taken to heart by this not so small band of dedicated users and Google has been going out of its way to court them, including new features and a well-received redesign in January.

The satisfaction index list can be viewed below:

American Consumer Satisfaction Index's 2017

1.Google+

2.Pinterest

3.Wikipedia

4.Instagram

5.YouTube

6.Twitter

7.Facebook

8.Tumblr

9.LinkedIn