Various companies are trying to revamp themselves and try new features out. In Google’s case, Google +1 is the newest feature that has been released. The question that seems to be on everyone’s mind is: what exactly is Google +1, and what can it do for me?
The primary idea for Google +1 is when you see a website on Google that you think is very helpful, you can hit the +1 button. That automatically means that you would recommend the site to friends and other people, too! The +1 button can be very helpful because the more +1’s a website has, the more approvals from web-surfers it has gotten. With that said, the approval and recommendation rate from people is shown by how many +1’s the website has. With more +1’s from people, the top-notch, quality websites will stay at the top—sort of like a rating or ranking system.
For starters, you have to be signed into a Google account to use the +1 feature. After you sign in and surf the web a little bit, you come across a great website that you seem to enjoy. You can hit the +1 button (which will come up in the search results) to recommend the site to others.
People can also +1 advertisements that they find helpful. When you +1 an ad (mixed with the websites you have +1-ed,) the information collected helps Google know what exactly you like to look at, and do. And from that it determines what kinds of ads to target at you.
It seems that this concept might have been semi-touched before with the Facebook’s “Like” button—or “Diggs” on Digg. However, it is a similar concept but this does show that Google is not trying to be a social network; they are just trying to make their search engine more applicable to the social scene. Over all, Google will ultimately know what “Googlers” want from them providing their own feedback from websites and ads.
What will Google come up with next? Maybe there will be a -1 and x1 on the horizon. -1: when people don’t like websites, and x1: to multiply how much someone really loves a site—to multiply impact. Guess we will have to wait and figure it out!
