War of the giants in the web arena has commenced. This started when Google launched last year an added feature to Google.com and Google search called the +1 (pronounced plus one). It is comparable to Facebook’s “like” button. Reports written about the conflict states that Google is not only developing a new social networking site, it is also trying to get a share of the new altitude of social sharing on websites in its index.
Being a Facebook patron, I tried out this feature of Google with a little hesitation. There are several things that bothered me initially, like its name. The first time I heard about it, I was taken aback (“get more plus 1s”? I thought the person was telling me something about mathematics). Then I tried to do some research on this immediately and had an insight on how it was named. Almost certainly, it was named Google plus 1 because clicking it would mean that there is another person who had been fond of it or in Facebook’s terminology, has “liked” it thus, plus one was added to the accounting for that web page.
Second was I needed to have a Google account to be able to enjoy all of plus one benefits. That is no different from Facebook. However, opening a Facebook account is easier since it will accept any e-mail address as compared to Google wherein it will only acknowledge a Gmail account.
However, all these minor disputes are mere shadow of its rewards; having a higher ranking in the most visited search engine impacts all businesses, companies, organization, professionals and even personalities. Clicking the plus one button on Google search listing will tell your personal contacts officially of your interests and preferences to this search result. It may also suggest that as compared to other results on view, the one with +1d is of the highest relevance to the search. All listing that were able to get more plus 1s would definitely look more appealing to the people who will be searching for the same keywords. The effects of this are viewers will definitely affect your website’s traffic as it would appear that your link is more clickable than others. The searchers would be able to see the actual people behind all those plus one and Google would even make it a priority for their contact (made up of friends, colleagues and family) to appear first. The familiarity and trust multiplies whatever interest the searcher had initially, thus compelling him or her to click on your link. As a result, it is expected that the number of +1s of a page will be used as a tool in assessing the marketability of people, product or services offered on the web. This will dramatically alter the evaluation of advertisers, marketing companies and SEO firms in the future.
Certainly, Google will have its hands full as it tries to battle it out with the social networking world it is trying to fit itself into. But with the way it has been implementing it and incorporating it with its core products, success is on its horizon.
