Google’s +1: their version of a Facebook Like

By Sean Sloan | May 11, 2011 |

One thing about the web: no good idea goes un-copied. At least not for long.

Google +1 button

No sooner did the major search engines admit that they were including “social signals” in their ranking algorithm then did Google announce their own social signaling device the +1 button. In order to see it you have to be logged into Google and doing a search. Next to the search results you will see a small +1 button in a grayed out state. It appears between the keyword line of the search results and the little magnifying glass icon to preview the page, an idea the copied from Bing.

You can rest assured that if someone +1’s your page in their search results that this will be considered a “vote” by Google’s algorithm as to the importance of your site and that, cumulatively, this will improve your ranking for that term and for you site in general.

In fact they just announced that, similarly to the Like button, there will soon be +1’s for web sites to use as well. Read about Google +1 for websites at Mashable.

Here is what Google has to say about their own +1 campaign.

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