It’s here and it’s receiving a lot of press attention around the globe – what are we talking about? Google+ Google’s new social networking experiment is taking the net by storm and everyone in the tech media is talking about it. In the marketing world people are already questioning how they can leverage the new social network for their brand and help get a “+1” for their site, products and services.
Google themselves even say that “With a single click you can recommend that raincoat, news article or favorite sci-fi movie to friends, contacts and the rest of the world. The next time your connections search, they could see your +1’s directly in their search results, helping them find your recommendations when they’re most useful.”
So it definitely an exciting new tool for people to recommend your site to their friends, family or coworkers. Think of it as similar to sharing and liking something on Facebook, except the focus is not about friends and building followers, but sharing information and recommendations.
“To the naked eye, it seems all about bringing more traffic to web publishers, but in reality it is all about business” – Frank Watson, Search Engine Watch.
One of the thoughts about the new project is the possibility is Google uses the +1 recommendations to rank pages in the search results – this could be huge to all sites in the search engine. Of course this is not certain, but it could possibly be a route they take down the road. This will likely be watched with close attention. Google has even written information about the +1 button to webmasters and explain that “Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking” http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html so this could very much be a possibility.
As you can see from the below screenshot, a simple search for “Orlando Real Estate” brings Realtor.com as the first organic result and it includes the Google +1 button.
By clicking on the +1 button it allows you to recommend the link to the world! Remember +1’s are public and therefore be mindful on what you decide is worthy of you hitting the +1 button.
The big question is how will +1 effect a sites traffic? Well, personalized annotations next to your page in the search results may increase the odds that those who have searched go to your page as they may see that you have a following and others have liked your site. This is another way of building your brands image and brand loyalty
As for +1 with WordPress, there are plugins rolling out that are incorporating the button on WordPress sites. Using the +1 button can be a great way to get positive reviews and build trust with future and current customers.