Billed as a direct response to Facebook’s ‘Like’ button, Google’s +1 (…pronounced ‘Plus one’) button provides another opportunity for site visitors to share content they like. Including a +1 button on your site’s pages not only opens another avenue for visitors to share your site socially, it carries certain SEO benefits as well.
According to Google, the +1 button is short-hand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.” It allows a user to give something their public stamp of approval – in turn, sharing content, video or any kind of webpage with friends and contacts on Google.
You’re likely seeing +1 buttons starting to appear on many websites.
They’ve been appearing in search results for a while now but only recently have website owners been able to post the small button on their webpages…all that’s required is a short bit of code you paste onto your page. You can also customize how the +1 button appears on your webpage(s).
For users, +1 activity for them and their friends can be set to appear on each page that includes the button. There you can see who has “+1’d” that page. It’s said content recommended by friends is much more valuable than content from a random person…in this atmosphere driven by how sharable your content is, we tend to agree.
This is by far Google’s most ambitious attempt yet to compete with Facebook in the social media realm.
In the last year, the ‘Like’ button has pretty much become the default means by which people share articles, videos and other content online. Google hopes to change this. Judging from early numbers on +1 and Google’s + network, they may give Facebook a run for its money.
It would behoove you to make sure your content is sharable on all of the popular places people interact online.
Besides social sharing, +1 can also yield some benefit in terms of search engine optimization as well. In an FAQ, the search engine says adding the button will prompt Google to re-crawl your page(s) and store the title and content data for future impressions.
+1 impressions may also serve as a signal on how relevant your page’s content is says Google. Over time, they hope to incorporate this kind of data into their algorithm.
This new development from Google is exciting indeed. We’ve already begun adding +1 buttons to some of our webpages. If you click on one, a login screen will appear where you can sign in to your account.
Considering the ease at which you can add the +1 button, we think it can’t hurt. But considering the SEO benefits and the tremendous popularity from its onset, we think Google +1 is certain to rival Facebook’s ‘Like’ features.
In light of this, we think it’s very important you make sure visitors can easily ‘+1’ your site.