So what is Googles +1 button all about? The +1 button launched by google recently is an interesting attempt to increase and understand user preferences. This would be very important data, doubt. Coming back to the +1 button it made to act akin to the Facebook Like or Twitter Tweet me button.
There have been mentions that the data would be used to increase search results on SERP’s.
From our perspective this is another attempt very close to social marketing after Buzz. It’s too early to predict which markets and audiences will really latch on to this new feature. But coming from the search engine behemoth this would surely be looked upon as a big move and yes it will impact businesses and reputation on the SERP’s.
So is it like the facebook like button or something different?
All of us using the social media are very well versed with facebook’s ‘Like’ button almost everywhere on the Internet everywhere, website pages to blogs to articles and web contentpages etc. What the like button has done is allowed us the ability to assess the popularity of the page content and recommend it to people we know and people who follow us. Obviously it also means that we have the ability to access beter content, offers etc by people who like pages and recommend them to us and others. So you the like button in a way defined the popularity of a particular web page which in turn allowed everyone visiting to spend less time deciding if he / she wanted to spend more time on it.
With the +1 button Google is hoping it can leverage the ‘like’ affinity to work pretty much in the same way but for broader objectives. So if you have reached here you have understood right now there will be one more button on the web pages now giving you an option of clicking the Facebook ‘Like’ button and / or clicking the Google ‘+1′ button.
On first thoughts you might say why would I do that? sure looks like you have to repeat yourself but that’s not really true. You pressing the +1 button means you are adding to credibility of the page for the world at large and this will reflect on google search engine results, now that is big isn’t it!
Now before you start thinking about integrating the +1 button you should consider a few things :
Do you want to integrate another rating / voting method onto your website page or blog?
This means you need to decide and think about the possibility of splitting your audiences likes or you may call them votes. So assuming that you have X number of facebook likes today and they are driving Y numbers of traffic to your site, would you be ok with some part of the traffic choosing +1 instead of ‘like’? The chances of many visitors doing choosing exactly this is pretty remote right now but given every businesses need to drive traffic from search engines you might want to do it soon.
Let’s look at it as a social media user. Would you want the world to know what you like or you pretty much want to keep it to your friends and followers. Every time you will click the Google+1 button (and obviously you are expected to be logged in) it will shared with everyone in your google account. And the best part is that once you have chosen you can’t withdraw. This calls for some thought before you +1 something isn’t it J? Wonder what a ‘-1’ for dislike would do.
Most importantly the +1 data will be displayed on Search Engines organic results page as also on the sponsored ads that show on the search results page. This feature coupled with the googles new farmer or panda algorithm update can bring about a major change in the way search results are delivered and used.
In short Google +1 allows you to share your favorite links, websites, blogs with your friends and contacts in your google account and with the world on organic search engine results and paid search ads using search engine marketing / pay per click / adwords. So how do you get started? While +1 is not available all across the world yet it will be available soon. Meanwhile you need to create a Google profile first. And this profile will also help you marketing yourself. And we will tell you have to embark on your Personal Branding campaign in our coming blog posts.
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