What is Google +1 and What Should I Know?

Have you seen or heard of Google +1? The +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.”

Basically, it’s Google responding to the huge response to the Facebook “like” button

With the Google +1 you can publicly give something your stamp of approval of their site or local locations. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.  You can see everything that your friends have given a “like” +1 too!

Google talks about this in their post:

“The primary benefit is that search gets better. It gets better in the user interface immediately, and we’ll look at it as a potential signal to improve search quality as well. I find social search extremely useful, especially with the recent updates. This change continues the evolution of social search, and it’s a natural progression to improve the search experience,” said Matt Cutts, a Google engineer who is most known for leading Google’s search spam fighting team but who also helped launch Google Social Search in 2009.”

I really don’t know much more then that but I do feel like this is going to be something that’s going to be important for local online advertising and local SEO.  If you know what your friends have given their stamp of approval this will be huge for local advertising.  I also think this is will be big for SEO.  I don’t know if they’ll count it as a link but I could see them giving it importance.

Mashable said that Google said that “+1 data will directly influence its market share dominating search rankings”. So we may see modifications to the famous Google algorithm. My thoughts on this are that none of us will see major SEO algorithm changes for a long time.  I wouldn’t expect any major changes for sure till Google Plus One (Google+1) goes out of beta.  Do you think that this is Google’s response to link farms and crappy SEO firms?

Marcos posted his thoughts on his SearchEngineLand post:

Unfortunately I predict another bummer. The +1 button (named by robots) can get wide adoption among webmasters keen on SEO but who’s gonna click on them? You don’t get instant gratification from your friends or followers for sharing, just a bot will be feeded.

Poor Google, a company run by lonely engineers and their robot friends, instead of sociable people…

Here is a ton of articles about the Google +1 Button:

• Mashable: Google’s Answer to the Facebook “Like” Button: The “+1”
• TechCrunch: With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social — As Do Google Ads
• Google’s Official Blog: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results
• SEOMoz.org: Google +1 And The Rise of Social SEO – Shows a nice graph of Facebook share’s correlation with current Google search results
• Malcolm Coles: Google +1: What normal person would ever use it? – Interesting update about adding the +1 button to the browser.

My Questions, please help me:

I would like to know your thoughts on what you think this will do for local businesses or local SEO.  Will this be another failure by Google on their attempt to create themselves more like a social network?  Do you think that this is Google’s response to link farms and crappy SEO firms?

Tagged as: Google +1, google plus 1, local advertising, local SEO, Online Advertising, SEO

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