You might have heard the news on social media or maybe you were notified that your Google surveys account will soon be deactivated.
Google is officially sunsetting its survey product, Google Surveys, on November 1st (although teams can login and download any survey data until the end of November).
Some folks are taking to the internet to express their concern.
What is Google Surveys?
Before we dive into why Google is shutting down its survey product, let’s get clear on what the product is. Because there’s some confusion about that.
Google Surveys vs. Google Forms
Google Forms is mostly widely known and used. The primary purpose of Google Forms is to create simple questionnaires and distribute them to a list or audience of your choosing.
Google Surveys is different from Forms in that you can either present a survey to your own audience via your website or leverage Google’s network to serve your Survey across thousands of Google-owned properties. Leveraging the Google network will cost you though, so be prepared to pay up for each survey response.
Why is Google Surveys Shutting Down?
So how come Google Surveys is shutting down? In short, the Google team does not feel that the current product meets customer needs.
The official statement from Google states:
“While we believe in our mission of enabling businesses of all sizes to run custom market research with an easy to use and affordable tool, we do not believe the existing product is the best way to do this going forward. The Surveys team will be working to find new ways to bring the scale & insights of our research network to customers via Google Ads products for advertiser, customer, and market research.”
Are you a Google Surveys user? Here’s what you can use instead.
The power of Google surveys was that it could deliver your research to massive audiences quickly. If you’re a small business or have little budget to spend and still need that functionality to power your market research, there are still other similar services available. Check out this Quora thread which summarizes a few options.
And if you’re looking for a way to deploy surveys to your existing user base (which Google Surveys also supported) look no further than Sprig’s in-product surveys. Target specific users based on actions they take in your product, present them with a simple on-brand survey, and get responses in minutes. When the results flow in, Sprig's award-winning AI groups your open text, voice, and video responses into themes so you can review or dig deeper quickly.
