Those of us familiar with Facebook know all about the ‘Like’ button. Now Google has come up with +1
Google’s +1 is aimed at helping people discover relevant content on a website, a search result, or anad that has been given the thumbs up from the people they already know and trust.
From the perspective of someone giving a +1 to a page:
As with ‘Like’, you would click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. For some, Google’s +1 is an endorsement of a website or page you like or wish to give your support to without going to the trouble of adding a link to it from your own website, or posting it on Bing, Twitter, Diggit, Facebook or any other web2 forum.
Google Buzz for example, is better used when you want to share or start a discussion about something: Have you seen this blog? or What do you think about this page/article?The + one action merely shows which pages in a Google Search are flagged as worth a look by people they are connected with.
Although this may mean you can be less selective about which sites you wish to give a +1 rating, it would make sense to remain judicious in who or what you put your name to. Whilst it may be great to share that you rate the fan page for Rhys Darby or the All Blacks, you might be better leaving that sort of thing on Facebook and limiting your +1s to businesses you have dealt with or pages run by people you would actually recommend to someone.
You can however choose not to display your +1s on your Google profile, so they only come up on the relevant Google search pages.
When the Google search results are displayed, everybody can see aggregate annotations (how many +1’s that page has received). Signed-in users also see personalized annotations from Gmail, GoogleTalk and Google Contacts as well as people they follow in Google Reader and Google Buzz. The same applies with members within a shared circle of contacts in Google+. In other words, Google may show personalized annotations to any signed-in user who has a social connection to a +1.
A search result may show a potential visitor that 99 people have + 1’d a particular page, but also that 3 of their connections also recommended it.
The underlying theory is, the personal connection to those three recommendations is stronger than the 99 anonymous +1 endorsements.
From the perspective of the page owner:
Adding the +1 button to your pages allow users to recommend your content if they choose to, knowing that their friends and contacts will see their recommendation when they undertake Google searches.
The only downside is that they have to be signed in as a Google user for it to work.
Once signed in, the Google search result snippets will show which pages found in a relevant Google search they have endorsed to their contacts and they in turn can see which pages have been + 1’d by them. If none of your connections has +1'd the page, the snippets for each page linkwill simply display the aggregate number of +1's it has received.
Although having +1 capability on your webpages does not boost that page’s rankings directly in Google searches, it has the potential to increase your chances of traffic from a prequalified visitor – someone they know has endorsed this page, so they are not only given another reason to visit your page, but are likely to be more receptive to what they find there.
Also interesting is that once you add the +one button, Google may crawl or recrawl the page, and store the page title and other contentindirect response to someone’s +1 button impression or click.
If you’d like to better understand the Google +1 application in relation to your business, contact us today.
Post your comment
Comments
No one has commented on this page yet.
RSS feed for comments on this page | RSS feed for all comments