Updated 7 October 2013 to reflect changes in the Google Plus Circle Management interface.
Recently Google+ changed the location and choices for Circle volume and subscription settings. These settings affect how much “volume” of posts from each circle will appear in your Home stream, thus allowing you to fine tune your home page experience.
Previously they were contained in an easy-to-see slider at the top of each circle’s view on the Google+ Home page. Now they have been moved inside a “Settings” link in the “in this circle” card on each Circle’s individual view page. To get to the view page of a circle, go to your home page and select one of the tabs at the top. If you have more than a few circles, you will need to click the “More” tab to see them all.
The bell icon allows you to turn on or off notifications for that circle. Turning notifications on means you will be notified (according to your notification settings in your main settings) for each post added by someone in that circle.
Clicking the gear icon link reveals the Circle subscription settings.
There are now three settings you can make that affect how many of the posts from that circle will show in the default “All” stream on your Home page. Let’s talk about what each one means and what it will do:
1. Show posts in Home stream
This is pretty straight forward. This setting is the “kill switch” for that circle’s posts in your All stream. Uncheck it, and no posts from this circle will show. Check it, and Google will show posts from it in your All stream according to the next setting.
2. Amount of posts in Home stream
You will only see this second option if you have the “Show posts in Home stream” box checked. Hover your mouse over the word “Amount” and three choices will appear in a pop-out box to the right: More, Standard, and Fewer. We don’t know what these mean exactly, but the most significant change is that there is no longer an “All” setting. And that means that Google+ no longer shows all posts from people you Circle in the “All” stream. In smaller circles, if you go directly to the circle’s view page, you will probably see all the posts from the members of that circle. However, in larger circles (generally 500 or more members), Google+ applies a filter that will determine how many posts you see. So keep your circles smaller if you want to see all posts!
Adjusting Community Post Volume
As you’ve probably noticed, posts from Communities in which you are a member also show up in your default Home stream. You can adjust whether you want to see any posts from that community in your stream, and the volume of those posts. To do so you must go to each community individually.
In each community, click the Actions link in the left community information box, just under the community’s banner:
Similar to the settings for circles above, there is a check box to choose whether or not you want posts from this community to show up in your home stream. If you check it, you can then choose if you want to see “more,” “standard” (the unadjusted algorithm), or “fewer” posts from the community.
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