by Cara Callaghan
Google launched the “+1” button back in March 2011 so search could become more social and has already seen 10 million sign ups. YouGov projects that Google+ will become the number two network after Facebook, “in the next year.” It is based around the premise and statistics that show we like to get recommendations from our family and friends:
“90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people they know”
And
“71% say reviews from family members or friends influence purchase decisions”
Profiles are currently now available for individuals as of late last week. The ground work is being laid for business profiles with Ford and GM acting as beta testers, so unfortunately hotels cannot set up a profile right now. However, Google engineers are promising to build a business experience that will exceed that of consumer profiles.
In order to ‘+1’ things online, you first need a public Google profile and you need to be signed in. You can create one at Google Profiles.
Once you are signed in, go to www.google.com and enter your search phrase. On the search results page you will see a small +1 link beside each entry.
Your +1’s are stored in a new tab within your Google profile. You can opt to show your +1’s tab to the world or keep your tab private, using it to personally manage the ever-expanding record of things you love.
How does it work?
1.When you ‘+1’ an ad, organic result or website page, you are +1ing the final landing page URL associated with that item.
2.
Which leads to your ‘+1’ being included in the annotations for the ads and organic results associated with that URL.
3.
Searchers will see personalized annotations from:
4.
Their Gmail chat buddies
5.
Their Google contacts in the My Contacts group
6.
People they are following in Reader & Buzz
Adding the ‘+1’ button to your website gives users even more opportunities to endorse your brand and is something we strongly recommend you do. These personal recommendations have the potential to drive more and better qualified traffic.
Why it’s important for Search:
1.+1 is one of many social signals used for search ranking.
2.
+1s may affect search ranking and is likely to be a positive thing for high quality sites.
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Google has said it believes that +1s will increase CTR for your Google AdWords ads, which would positively affect high quality sites and ads.
+1 metrics are now available in Google Webmaster tools, which provide you with an idea of how +1‘s affect your organic search traffic. The metrics also show you how many times your pages have been +1’d. and aggregate geographic and demographic information about the Google users who’ve +1’d your pages - which is very interesting.
What you need to do:
1.Ensure your site is useful, engaging and includes content that people will want to recommend to their family and friends.
2.
Think about the pages where you want to add +1 buttons first (wedding, spa, conference etc as well as your main pages like home page, special offers etc.)
3.
Work with your digital marketing agency or webmaster to implement the +1 buttons
