You may have noticed over the last week that Google+ no longer have their links and reviews in many search results. In the past you will often have seen these links when doing a search for a specific business name. If the intent of the search is clearly for Google+, you will still get related results.
Google+
You may still see the knowledge graph which will show various local information sourced from Google+, including the google reviews which people have left.
This news may please several sites which have been competing for local listing places such as yelp. Many companies have been unhappy in the past as Google plus pages often rank higher than their own, taking away much of their traffic.
Knowledge graph
There have been a number of Google+ changes in recent months including no longer making it compulsory that you have to have a Google plus account to register with certain sites such as YouTube. The speculation has recently been that Google+ is moving towards phasing out. But our conclusion is that Google plus still has millions of users and Google are most likely just moving away from local and maybe trying to un-complicate things.