A little over two weeks ago Google lobbed another volley into the social search arena with the launch of Google Plus One or “+1.” Google describes this new function as “shorthand for ‘this is pretty cool’ or ‘you should check this out.’” The search engine giant decided to roll this user experience feature out to a small number of users, since the functionality is connected to your Google account. This process of giving your stamp of approval is not a foreign concept since nearly every human on the planet has used or at the very least seen the “Like” button on Facebook.
More than a few questions popped into my head as I began to investigate the potential impact to Groove’s social media methodology. Does Google want to be like Facebook? Is this going to be as successful as Google Wave? Will this be spammed and abused like most everything else that Google acknowledges impacts the search algorithm? Before I could ask any intelligent questions I had to test this new toy right? So after making sure I was signed in, I dove into the search box to start this adventure. Much to my chagrin I was unable to get that little blue/gray box to show up in any of my queries. Learning that one of my social challenged coworkers did have access only compounded my disappointment. Google said they were only launching “+1” to a test audience of less than 2%.
It’s important to understand that with enough investigation one can find loopholes in just about everything. Since I wasn’t included in the 2% of Google users deemed worthy enough to test, I had to go to google.com/experimental and sign up for it myself. After signing up for the Google experiment, I opened a new window and presto:
Google stated in various interviews that the data obtained when a user +1′s a listing is not influencing the search engine ranking results. They did however say that at some point in the future it may. The idea that users can tell Google which results are more helpful is a good idea and should lead to better & more relevant results. After all relevancy is a key building block in Google’s algorithm. As users get more accustomed to this action it is likely we will see websites themselves adding buttons to let their visitors +1 the site, if some webmasters haven’t already. This is similar to how prevalent a “Tweet This” button is in today’s web experience.
How the data is translated to the users within Google’s network will be key to the success of this option. Will you begin to see more pages that your Google account is connected to and will your friends see how much you like certain sites? Bing and Facebook have been the pioneers in the social search arena and it will be interesting to see how +1 and other changes Google will implement change the social search landscape.
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