Google Plus One Buttons

I've recently added Google Plus One Buttons to pages here. I used to have other buttons - Twitter, Facebook "like" and even some others if we go back far enough. I've removed everything else and now have only the Google button.

Why this and not the others? Well, there are several reasons. First, I don't really like these things. There's a dirty underside of tit for tat trading in a lot of this social media tagging and I find that very distasteful. It bothers me to participate in something that is subject to great abuse.

So why use Google PlusOne?

Simply because this is the first social button that directly affects search engine results. If someone recommends a page here by clicking that PlusOne, Google will use that information in its search results.

Although I can't be sure of this, I suspect that the potential for spamming abuse is lower. For example, if somebody goes on a rampage and clicks that button on a few thousand (or even a few hundred) pages here, I would think that Google would recognize those as likely being invalid and would ignore them. They might also be able to detect cross-trading: if John is plussing Mary's pages and Mary is plussing John's, Google could notice that if their pages run Adsense or use Analytics. This may eliminate some of the fraud associated with social recommendations.

So, for now at least, I've added these buttons. People have started using them. I'm not sure what happens when someone not signed in with a Google account does this - I assume Google asks them to create an account (and this may all be tied in with Google's new, still in beta, Google+).

These could become very important. If you have a website and care about Google traffic, you probably should be thinking about adding these.

4 comments

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Fri Jul 1 12:28:48 2011: 9592   TonyLawrence




At another site forum, I see that people are already recommending Plussing your own pages.

I sincerely hope that Google is smart enough to recognize those as invalid.



Wed Jul 6 10:50:05 2011: 9601   NickBarron




Its all a load of rubbish in my opinion.

Be it Facebook, Google or Twitter my brain ignores it all.

I can see the logic with putting the google version on if it will alter search results, but as you say this will be being abused already.







Wed Jul 6 12:23:06 2011: 9602   TonyLawrence




While I would never underestimate the ability of the SEO manipulators, I'm not sure it will be easy to fool Google with this. I'm sure they can create thousands of fake Google accounts one way or another, but it's not so easy to build reputation with those accounts and that may be what matters.

We'll see..



Sun Aug 21 00:23:43 2011: 9723   videoproduction
http://www.webvideos.co.uk



The problem is the few amount of people that are probably on Google+. Most people I know are on Facebook, but only a few people I know are on Twitter. For people really into social media, like us, we are likely to use more SM mediums, but the general public is not. I just don't see that many general users, who are the majority of the users probably anyways, making the transition.

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