Google rolls out +1 button for websites

[Emil]

Google today released the +1 button to the whole Web. You should thus start seeing the +1 button appear on various sites all over the Internet.

The search giant has already partnered with a few sites that have adopted the +1 button: AddThis, Mashable, The Huffington Post, Rotten Tomatoes, Nordstrom, O'Reilly, Reuters, The Washington Post, Best Buy, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg. As for its own properties, Google says the button will be adopted on the Android Market, Blogger, Product Search, and YouTube.

Less then three months ago, Google added the +1 button to its search engine, allowing users to upvote search results. The plus one name comes from forums and similar discussion mediums where the term is commonly used to indicate agreement with a previous post.

In this way, Google is allowing its users to vote on sites and advertisements that appear in its search results. The company displays the sites that you and your contacts have +1'd so you can see who recommends what and make your decision accordingly (you must be signed into your Google Account).

With today's expansion, Google will have access to even more data on what content you approve of. This will help the company further improve its search results, make more money from advertising deals, and generally mine further data about its users. In short, it's the search giant's answer to Facebook's Like button.

"If you're a webmaster, you can get the +1 button code and learn more about implementation on our +1 webmaster site," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "We hope you’ll agree that +1 buttons across the web make it even easier for you to recommend content to your friends and contacts, and make search results even more helpful and relevant."

We already have Facebook and Twitter buttons at the bottom of our articles, so we're not sure if we need yet another one. What are your thoughts on the +1 button and do you want TechSpot to add it?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/44049-google-rolls-out-1-button-for-websites.html

 

[princeton]

Well I'm sure someone is going to have fun making a +1 bot to bump their website to the top pages.

 

[Mister_K]

+1 interwenbz 4 u!

@Princeton, I am sure there will be some system put in place to overcome this, if there isn't already

 

[Greg S]

Sure go ahead and mess with google. That's an easy way to get your site instantly banned.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

@ Princeton - they'll check your IP and only count your vote once. Of course, any internet user in China uses a service that scrambles IPs hundreds of times a minute to avoid the govt firewalls, so maybe that won't work.

They're doing this because google's search capabilities are very limited when it comes to preference. Google excels at finding general facts, but is terrible at recommending a new car that you'd like. But your facebook account would be much better at it, and google knows this. They know that facebook contains a TON of data about what you like and are interested in, and that's advertising gold. Since FB and google pretty much hate each other, google needs another way to access (or build up) the same data.

 

[mario]

And of course we ?Techspot? just added the +1 button on our story pages. So you know feel free to '1-up' any story you like

 

[yukka]

Hmm I dont want to do google any favours by pressing it.

 

[Raswan]

in short, no we don't want it

 

[Benny26]

There has to be a slight smell of abuse here....but then i agree, Google will probably have some sort of system in place.

I can't see IP tracking working due to the easy ways there are round that sort of thing.

*+1 Clicked*

 

[Julio Franco]

Personally I find these many buttons annoying, that's why we try to tone them down on TechSpot. That said, it's inevitable to have them when the competition are promoting themselves on all major social networks and now Google.

 

[mario]

I can vouch for Julio when he says he dislikes all these social widgets. But the truth is they can be very rewarding and here at TechSpot when we use them we try to position them in a way that is not annoying or obtrusive to the users.

And by the way `+1ing` a story about `+1` is so meta haha

 

[PinothyJ]

milwaukeemike said:
@ Princeton - they'll check your IP and only count your vote once. Of course, any internet user in China uses a service that scrambles IPs hundreds of times a minute to avoid the govt firewalls, so maybe that won't work.

They're doing this because google's search capabilities are very limited when it comes to preference. Google excels at finding general facts, but is terrible at recommending a new car that you'd like. But your facebook account would be much better at it, and google knows this. They know that facebook contains a TON of data about what you like and are interested in, and that's advertising gold. Since FB and google pretty much hate each other, google needs another way to access (or build up) the same data.

"you must be signed into your Google Account"

It must be a massive struggle the read the article ALL THE WAY THROUGH…

 

[NeoFryBoy]

"Click here to +1 this as [NAME] ()" Pretty good bot protection I'd say.

 

[Guest]

I don't understand the purpose of this? Google already tracks what results you click and tie them to your search term, isn't that already a plus one in itself?

 

[princeton]

PinothyJ said:

milwaukeemike said:
@ Princeton - they'll check your IP and only count your vote once. Of course, any internet user in China uses a service that scrambles IPs hundreds of times a minute to avoid the govt firewalls, so maybe that won't work.

They're doing this because google's search capabilities are very limited when it comes to preference. Google excels at finding general facts, but is terrible at recommending a new car that you'd like. But your facebook account would be much better at it, and google knows this. They know that facebook contains a TON of data about what you like and are interested in, and that's advertising gold. Since FB and google pretty much hate each other, google needs another way to access (or build up) the same data.

"you must be signed into your Google Account"

It must be a massive struggle the read the article ALL THE WAY THROUGH…

People will make bots to create spam accounts and 1-up multiple sites. There's a reason techspot gets the odd user with the name a name like IG8R29IOK who tells us about an amazing new auction site in the worst possible English. People can make programs to make an account,1-up multiple sites and repeat.

 

[mario]

From what I understand +1 won't help any page ranking on Google, +1'ed links will only appear if you search for something and a friend has +1'ed a story related to your search.

 

[Archean]

For usage of just one feature I am not interested to create an Google account, so +1 is pretty much irrelevant for me. But then again, I don't have any account on Facecook so it doesn't matter anyway.

 

[r8bwp]

If it helps improve my googles searches rather than getting crap that that i`m not after, i`m in! CLICK!

 

[Benny26]

Surly then, thinking more about the words you put into Google will actually overcome the '+1' in the first place.

I mean, I can't ever think of a big generic search i did where the page i wanted was so far back in Google that i'de never find it. It's looking more like -1 for the +1 now.

 

[Kibaruk]

@Princeton: It says you see what YOUR CONTACTS have bumped up.

@Everyone else + Princeton: Is it THAT hard to read not using caps?