With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social — As Do Google Ads

It's an interesting way of arranging a link aggregator, in that the links are already present. That said, I don't see this taking off. People compartmentalize their life based on functionality. Some will see google only as a search tool, digg/reddit/hn/slashdot/etc as their social news site, gmail/hotmail/etc as their mailing client - and wont use those products for anything other than their mentally compartmentalized purpose.<p>The other issue that I see here is the culture that is present. Think of everyone that uses google - do you want all of their votes to influence the content that you see? I don't want to see the eggplant tofurduken recipe that Aunt Millie +1'd. Sure, you can limit the influence to just your circle of friends, but that doesn't bring much new to the table. Reddit has done well because it allows for this context of culture to be one of it's primary features (via subreddits). Even HN has this driving niche focus sitewide.<p>All that said, while I dont expect this to take off, I do expect to see a "+1 THIS!" button next to the "tweet this!"/"digg this!"/"reddit this!" button on every blogspam post out there.

The obvious: I'm sure it won't be long before Google creates an embeddable +1 button, for you to include in your site/blog/webapp. Because right now I don't see why I would run a search, click the result, go 'whoah, good article' and then hit back to the results page to '+1' aforementioned article.<p>What I <i>really</i> like about this, though, is that it sounds so good.<p>"I'd +1 that."<p>"Have you +1ed?"<p>"Where's the essay? Uh, it's in my +1s"

I see hundreds of thousands of billable hours of mechanical turk and dungeon grade Indian and Chinese IT Services time spent +1ing SEO spam farm links.

Google actually played around with a voting feature awhile back. When you searched for a term, there was an up arrow on the results, so it moved those results to the top every time you searched for those terms. This was incredible useful for me, because for example I was too lazy to bookmark api documentation and just search for example rails api, and the links I voted up were automatically at the top. If this works like this I will be happy, the social aspect I don't care for, but can see how it will be relevant if enough people are voting for good content.. thats associated with specific search terms.

Possible unintuitive user experience?<p>Google's usage comes from leaving Google's site as fast as possible (search for a term, then leave Google to visit the result).<p>This looks like you would do a search, visit the resulting site, and then remember to go back to the Google results page to click the +1.

4chan already regularly troll google search results by mass-searching for a specific, disturbing sentence. This seems like another tool in their arsenal.<p>Not saying Google should let bullies dictate their behaviour, but this _could_ be abused.

'+1' proves that Google is run by engineers.<p>I, for one, prefer it to 'Like' or 'Tweet'.

I'd rather see a "-1"; so when I go back to the results because the result didn't match my need, I could indicate it (w/o a full ban). I'm not likely to ever return for a +1 result, since, almost by definition, I'm done searching at that point.

Maybe I'm missing something, but what benefit do I get as a user out of +1-ing something?

I got a few downvotes last week saying google needed exactly this to fend off Facebook constructing a search engine based on it's like button data.<p>This goes a long way but the problem I see here is that I want to be able to +1 on the page itself, not have to click back to the search results, find the result again, and then press +1.

WSJ's coverage, "Google Seeks Answer to Facebook With 'Social Search'", is here: <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576232771273306208.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870380630457623...</a><p>Search Engine Land does a good job of relating this announcement to prior Google social projects and rumors: <a href="http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-facebook-like-button-70569" rel="nofollow">http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-fac...</a><p>You can join Google's +1 experiment here: <a href="http://www.google.com/experimental/" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/experimental/</a>

<a href="http://www.google.com/experimental/" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/experimental/</a>

I wish they would add a -1 button

Anyone else having flashbacks to Yahoo in 1996:<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo....</a><p>And then in 2006:<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060101035628/http://www.yahoo.com/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20060101035628/http://www.yahoo.c...</a><p>? Google has featuritis.

This seems like a defensive move on Google's part. I imagine there are talks inside Facebook to either develop their own search or work with another search provider to integrate Facebook into the results. I am not sure how widely this feature will be used but, in my opinion, it is definitely the right move.

I don't find this very useful. My friends often like things that I don't like. They're not my friends because they like the bands or movies or web sites that I do. Recommendations from my friends carry no more weight than they would from anyone else.<p>The only difference between a friend and a stranger is that I might engage a friend in a conversation with specific questions about something they've used or seen that I haven't, but the value of that conversation comes from the detail of the exchange and targeted or objective questions I'd ask, it's not expressible as a boolean like/+1 or a 1-10 rating.

Announcement on the official Google blog: <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/1s-right-recommendations-right-when-you.html" rel="nofollow">http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/1s-right-recommendati...</a>

Oh look, Google's very own "like" button.<p>Lets see how well they do with it.

This might sound dumb, but it's not really obvious how I add people I know to my google profile as a "friend". With facebook, it's dead simple and it makes sense why you would do that.<p>I assume I have to connect an account here: <a href="https://profiles.google.com/connectedaccounts" rel="nofollow">https://profiles.google.com/connectedaccounts</a><p>But then don't my friends have to do that as well? I don't really see why they would.

To jumpstart user identities in googles take on social google could buy communities like github, photo.net and import user identities from there. Of course the privacy and the UX of such a move will dictate whether users go "wow this is great" or "oh my god now the whole internet knows about my tinfoil hat". In the meanwhile they could try to integrate identities from services that google already owns - youtube, picasa, google reader etc.

I see this as potentially being very useful.<p>Imagine if you had the ability to Google search all of your friend's 'Likes' on Facebook. This is what Google is trying to create here, except for webpages instead of social snippets.<p>This suggests a parallel competing feature for Facebook: Make all of your friend's 'Likes' searchable through the search toolbar on Facebook.

A thought: Liking (or +1-ing) at the URL level seems useful but too coarse-grained as a general model. Maybe I've made too many Git checkins today, but I'd like to be able to select some text and +1 it. That's what I use Twitter or my blog for at least half the time: to point out an interesting sentence or two. You, know, the money quotes.

Can I opt-out of the social part but still allow my results to be used anonymously in their ranking algorithm?

It would have been so cool if I could have redirected ads to a particular friend. E.g, I know he's looking for a camera, and I see this great deal when looking up some reviews for him.<p>+1 -&#62; Bob's a happy monkey !

I don't see mainstream users regularly +1'ing (or plus'ing???) search results. Feels awkward and forced to me.<p>Hopefully this is just a very small part of their larger plan.

Puts an interesting spin on SEO. It seems the best technique is still to simply produce quality content that people want to link to and share with their friends.

The oddest thing to me is having it on the search results page. I understand that's where they hand off control, but on the other hand won't most people have to click through the links in question to figure out if they like the content? I generally only go back to the search results if I didn't like the results and want to check out sites lower down.

I hope, along with fixing everything else about Google Bookmarks, they add a feature to automatically +1 all of your bookmarks.

I like it. Seems unintrusive and simple, but useful en-masse.<p>(-1 the mouseover animated highlight glossy thing though.)

Isn't a search result assessed on its relevance to the search terms? I don't see that a site recommendation does an awful lot to help me know if it has what I'm looking for.

This is brilliant - and outdated. Do all Google engineers play RPG's? +60 credibility to my twitter feed!

The first one who publishes something, so we can integrate the +1-button on our websites, get's a +1! ;)

Is this going to be a new way for people to game search results? I personally wont be using it

Some of the websites I use are a competitive business advantage. Others are private topics of personal interest.<p>I love Google but I hated Buzz and I think I will hate social search too.

I don't understand the icon. What's it supposed to be? A file folder with colored tabs?

They could have gone 1+ and made the lisp folks happy.

i wonder if this will promote junk content. if paris hilton starts popping up over paris france when you search paris there might be a big issue here.