Google Plus One

Recently Google announced that they introducing a new social aspect to their listing, called “Plus One”, which is their way of adding another social element to the web.

Just like ‘liking’ in Facebook and showing support by tweeting, Google is giving people the option to vote “Plus One” for articles, websites, videos, etc. that they like. The “Plus One” button will also give users the opportunity to share content with their friends.

Here is a video from Google that explains their new Plus One concept:

Google’s Matt Cutts (head of ‘anti-spam’ at Google) has made it clear that his position is that when someone votes for something, it’s a good indicator on the quality of the content. If they ‘like’ it, it must be good. This is consistent with some of the other moves that Google has made recently to take notice of social indicators such as Twitter for their rankings.

One thing that I will do (as soon as it’s available) is to add the Plus One button next to each blog post, along with the ReTweet button. As you can see I’m already using the Wibiya toolbar below which helps readers to vote and share my content.

When you think about it, it makes sense really, as by adding more social interaction into the search results, means in theory, that better results will show up by people voting it there. Currently, well actually for a while now, backlinks have been the main “voting” mechanism for determining what is the content, but it will be interesting and worth while to see how the new Plus One feature evolves and effects things in the SEO/SER world.

I imagine that it will take time, but I imagine that it’s online importance will increase with time.

I think the social aspect of the web is only going to continue to keep growing and these moves by Google are a clear indication that they are aware of this and that they intend to harness the power of it to give them the best results in search.

Let me know what you think and predict below. Your comments and ‘tweets’ are always welcome

-Louis N. Batides