It‘s official. Today, Google launches the +1 button for websites. This is potentially a big game changer for SEO firms as it may change the way Google ranks websites. According to Google, the button will allow website visitors to give a “+1” rating to content they find useful. This rating system will allow website visitors to influence what content appears in the search results.
With a single click you can recommend that raincoat, news article or favorite sci-fi movie to friends, contacts and the rest of the world. The next time your connections search, they could see your +1’s directly in their search results, helping them find your recommendations when they’re most useful.
Webmasters may use the tool illustrated in the image below to create a customized +1 button for their websites. The tool provides code based on your customizations. After that just copy and paste the code onto the pages of your website. You can see what the +1 button looks like now on our blog.
With the launch of the +1 button for websites, Google appears to be telling us that they like the results they have seen from other versions of the button. But how will this button impact the way Google ranks websites? In an earlier post, David Scoville examined the +1 button and asked the question “How could it change SEO?” If Google is moving away from strictly algorithm-based search results, to results that are influenced more by social media, will that provide higher quality results?
Thank you for the post! I am now looking into adding this feature to my website.
I think Google is ‘tactically’ changing the ranking algorithm. But how effective will this be if that is their motive? I certainly believe webmasters may try to manipulate it or can’t someone be asked to ‘help’ recommend a site so as to increase ranking in SERP? Well, only time will tell whatever is their motive. Good and timely post.
nice post. thanks for the post.
Thanks for this post. I will add Google +1 to my blog. But i dont think so, google doesnt change its algoritm for google + 1
I feel like investing energy and layout space for google +1 will still be less effective than Facebook likes, because it will not have the potential to propagate through a social network.
Thanks for the post!
If you look at what Google is doing with Google Local where data is being scraped from would-be competitors, there seems to be a similarity where Google wants dominance is the social space and will use +1 as a tool to socially link more data to more people and more sites. Google has struck out with Buzz and Wave but they are learning and have more resources than most countries- at some point, they are going to swerve into solutions that will control more of what we do on the web. I see possibilities where this might be the venture that could eventually work. If they begin to see that SEO professionals are buying into the model for the sake of rankings, it will feed the system and increase the likelihood of adoption.
thanks for sharing….its awesome.
I wonder if it also has a dislike feature which is frequently abused for example on YouTube. I understand that any rating counts for more than no rating but rating with the intention to do harm rather than good to someone is pathetic.
We will try to get as much as +1 we can because we know the benefit of it with seo prespective (and soon we will see many people started to sell +1 as well) but a normal user do not know about it and where facebook like button is one step ahead from it.