Google is just beginning to roll out a new social search feature called Google +1. If you haven’t seen it or caught up on the latest of Google’s social products, then I strongly recommend you read about it via Danny Sullivan’s excellent write up on Search Engine Land, Meet +1: Google’s Answer To The Facebook Like Button. If you’re not seeing these +1 buttons in search results (you need to be logged in to your Google account) then you can opt in to the Experiment.
Essentially, this is a button very much like the Facebook Like button that Facebook launched about a year ago. If you like a web page, you hit the +1 button in Google search results. This applies to both organic search results and paid ads and means that when you are logged in you will see summaries of how many and who (if Google thinks you’re connected to them) +1d them. In a matter of months it’s likely that Google will roll out a button for websites to implement on-site, just like the Facebook Like button and Twitter’s Tweet buttons.
Now, I like Google +1. I’d look at the number of +1s when searching. I’ll probably even end up consulting on them and recommending on-site implementation on product pages, news, blogs and so on to make sure clients use the full arsenal of tools Google has available to them. But I wouldn’t use it myself as a consumer since my searches are just that, my searches, especially if it’s a public broadcast of everything I +1 and not filtered for topics like SEO versus say, travel. That means I’d effectively just be producing a lot of noise. The +1 tab on my Google profile page would just end up being an unfiltered mess of SEO pages, travel, maybe chocolate, wine, country pursuit websites…you get the gist, and maybe even that awesome site I visited to buy my best friend a surprise gift. Oh wait, they just found out. I +1d it didn’t I? There goes that surprise… [Lesson: think before you +1].
But that’s my point; I just want Google to be impartial. I log out of Google / switch browsers / use proxies to get that effect without personalisation butting in. Average Joes might be happily swayed by +1s and not be bothered by personalised search, but are they likely to contribute without any benefits to them? Really? Dean Cruddace summed it up nicely in 140 characters:
Oi granny Smith, what you looking for? “oh just knitting patterns”. Have you tried building a relevant social graph to connect the dots?
— Dean Cruddace (@DeanCruddace) March 30, 2011
Social networks like Facebook/Twitter reward sharing through conversations with your network. Marketers encourage contributions through the use of competitions. What does Google +1 offer?
Let’s look at the benefits to the three core parties that are involved when using Google +1:
- Benefits to Google: dare I say it, easy [you could read: lazy] way to aggregate data to improve search results, but also encourage publishers to improve their websites to encourage genuine positive feedback. Oh, and increased revenue from the extra clicks encouraged on Google’s PPC ads. Now that’s a handy plus.
- Benefits to publishers: publishers with audiences willing to engage will benefit from an additional boost to click through rates from search results thanks to +1. Publishers with different audience behaviours unlikely to contribute by +1ing or to hang around long enough to engage in this way may struggle. Smaller publishers may lose out on clicks in search results, regardless of rankings, to the bigger publishers. All publishers with a verified Google Webmaster Tools account will get to see stats related to +1.
- Benefits to users: seeing endorsements from others will be welcomed I suspect, and may even encourage clicks where they wouldn’t usually have clicked. [Hurrah to Google's bank account!] But the step before that – being encouraged to +1 something without an immediate reward – will probably leave them feeling irritated, or developing a kind of ad blindness to the +1 buttons so that they’re ignored entirely.
Let’s not forget here that users have to a) have a Google account and b) remember to sign in. Are you always signed in? If so, are you always signed in to YOUR account, your company’s account or your client’s account?
[Lesson: again, think before you +1. Don't +1 a NSFW site while logged into your client's account!]
My social networks are also targeted to some degree: I post to Twitter when I want my wider network – largely consisting of people I know, but haven’t met yet – to see. I post to Facebook when I want just those I’ve met or know a lot better to see, plus I can even select the exact members of the audience here. LinkedIn uses the RSS feed of my blog and a couple of other sites for strictly work-related content. But what use have I to broadcast, unfiltered, to everyone? More to the point; what benefit would I gain as a consumer from broadcasting, unfiltered, to everyone?
If +1 automatically Tweeted or created a Facebook or LinkedIn post, then perhaps we could see an interesting integration take place across the social media networks, but then I probably wouldn’t hook Google up to all those personal networks …and Google’s not the sharing type anyway.
Actually, Alex Rainert, a Foursquare exec, made a great point about when users are expected to +1 a web page:
Why would I “+1″ a link to a page before I’ve seen whether I like it and why would I go back to the results if I’ve found the best result?
— Alex Rainert (@arainert) March 30, 2011
If +1 fails it’ll be because a barrier exists getting users to +1 web pages in the first place. I suspect take up will be slow after the initial novelty and curiousity factors have worn off.
As any marketer knows, consumers are always thinking “what’s in it for me” so you have to make sure you’ve got a carrot to dangle. I’m not seeing that carrot for consumers here, and marketers aren’t encouraged to game +1s. Although, admittedly it’d probably work better if it was chocolate in my case.
There’s my two cents on +1. What’s yours?
March 30th, 2011 on 11:38 PM
You’re spot on. Google is trying to keep up with the social trends, and without the conversation element, +1 is going to be a thing that people do to stroke their Ego’s.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Google worked themselves right out of the Search Engine space because they are trying too hard to keep up and their only true innovations seem to be a day late and a dollar short.
March 30th, 2011 on 11:55 PM
Err.. can everyone search for assemble online and click +1 on my site?
http://assembleonline.co.uk
Thanks!
March 31st, 2011 on 12:02 AM
Matthew: it’s just a shame Google aren’t very sociable when it comes to their social products! They have the people, equipment and raw cash to make it happen, but why fall short when they’re so close? I seem to remember writing a post in very similar vain about Buzz.
http://www.searchenginechocolate.com/google-buzz-features-review-whats-all-this-buzz-about-then/
It just wasn’t very social… but that invention was more irritating. Don’t get me started on Wave…
Ed: I suppose that’s one way of gaming it! Haha! Though I won’t be recommending that method for clients’ sites
March 31st, 2011 on 5:41 AM
One your closing point, what is the consumer carrot for Facebook’s Like button, or indeed any other such button?
March 31st, 2011 on 9:34 AM
Steven: I think that Facebook’s carrot is that you get to share things with your pre-selected group of friends and from that you can start conversations with them, or they can even take whatever you shared and share it with their network. I personally find sharing things in that way quite rewarding. What do you think? Do you think Facebook et al might be missing a trick too?
March 31st, 2011 on 11:31 AM
Thanks for the tweet pull Joanna, it was one of those ffs moments.
I commented something similar over on Petes post: http://www.holisticsearch.co.uk/2011/03/31/google-social-communities/
In essence and in short, G just ain`t getting the social thing and until they can get their mits on the data that FB uses they are going to continually reinvent the wheel. Its unfortunate but enevitable that the more data points they have the more they can better target demographics.
One business model of driving ad revenue, much muddying of water for me and you, build out gazillions of verticals to achieve thei goal.
Just to reiterate my comments over on Petes site, I don`t have a problem with G going after social as long as it is not to the detriment of relevance, hence that tweet.
March 31st, 2011 on 11:45 AM
Dean: was a great tweet! Made me LOL and think it through…
Yep, I can’t see Facebook and Google being “friends” anytime soon and sharing. I wonder if a developer or two will try to create a plugin for Facebook anyway. At least I’m sure a button graphic with a carefully crafted URL could be integrated on a Facebook page.
Google does do things that centre around their search product though when it comes to social. Fair enough but going public with 100% of personal data is not usually welcomed! At least they don’t mask that fact though like Facebook. Although I could mention Facebook’s autogenerated pages that work well in SERPs and how they were a great idea for them and technically for users too (oh, and advertisers….).
March 31st, 2011 on 11:52 AM
Great write up.
I think the idea behind it is great, but the potential for abuse is high. It would be great to see which of my friends +1′d a site, but what about sites that no one in my group of friends has been to? I too quite often disconnect from Google when doing anything involving a browser, so seeing a random site that has been +1′d will make me a little leery.
If this is a precursor to the famed “Circles” that Google so adamantly denied at SXSWi this year, then this could be the thing that brings them into the spotlight (so to speak).
March 31st, 2011 on 12:29 PM
“going public with 100% of personal data”
Interesting you should say that Joanna and following on a little more from Lawrences comment
“If this is a precursor to the famed “Circles””
It doe not take a huge leap of faith to see where Google is going through maping the social graph through our shared connections (http://www.google.com/s2/search/social) and piecing that together with our public profiles (https://profiles.google.com/safcblogger) <– mine.
Connect the dots and you have the beginnings of a social networking platform. Not exactly Buzz but among similar building blocks, no?
Am I mental or far from the mark?
March 31st, 2011 on 12:36 PM
Lawrence: great point about sites new to your social circle (according to Google). I meant to include that in my post but got carried away blogging about carrots and chocolate… +1 is unlikely to aid you discovering new content though. UNLESS you search specifically for things WITHOUT +1s to make sure you’re most likely to be the first to discover it.
Although all those processes may become subconcious processes when using Google SERPs. Or our brains might just say:
“I really just want to find X and I’m short on time. I can’t be bothered trying to decyfer who +1ed what, whether I trust that person and whether I want to be original or not…. I’ll just ignore +1s altogether and opt for ad blindness so I find X much faster…”
I like Google’s simple, impartial, non-complex SERPs. Already Social Circle inclusions have begun to annoy me since randoms who I don’t recognise who happened to tweet something random at some random occasion in the past don’t help me make choices on what content I’m searching for on the web…. but that’s all IMO. And I’m a marketer, an SEO, so I’m thinking much more about these things unlike the Average Joe.
March 31st, 2011 on 12:47 PM
Dean: I thought that’s basically what they tried to do with Buzz, but actually CREATE a network in that case. A shoddy network though… that doesn’t “buzz” but more like hums like an old desktop PC fan about to break…
With other social networks, even sites like Instagram, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc., you can select to add your friends from Facebook and/or Twitter. OR you can search via Gmail contacts if you choose to do so, or search for contacts manually. See, there’s a set of permissions that you grant the networks/sites when creating your network. Makes you feel in control of who sees what according to the content.
Google algorithmically selecting your network for you is impressive and I love how they did it from a programming point of view. But I had no part in the creation, gave no permissions to Google to assume that I want to be connected to ALL of those people and share my favourite sites with them, too. You could talk about extreme cases like the well-publicised lady’s abusive ex-husband being put back in contact with her thanks to Google Buzz: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/12/google-buzz-privacy/ Rare but relevant.
IMO Google’s being a playground bully rather than a socially responsible adult, caring and sharing.
March 31st, 2011 on 1:04 PM
I remember that Buzz article.
Yep nail on the head.
Control. To be fair G does offer a degree of control over your social circle, but to disconnect and take back that control into your own hands, you have to NOT publicly share your info via Quora, twitter and LinkedIn among others. And do NOT link to those profiles in your G profile. Your social circle connections also take weeks to update and who is also to say that the data gathered would not be stored anyway pre-edit.
Counter productive and anti-social, but understanding the mechanisms that control the very data you share is at least a first step in the right direction.
Approaching it from another angle altogether, that temporal data you are sharing is adding to the relevancy mix to some degree so even if +1 is to add more fairy dust onto it, why not keep all of your shared stuff public. But make sure you are logged into the right profile
March 31st, 2011 on 1:37 PM
That’s a good point, Dean.
I don’t want to go and remove connections because as you said it’d be antisocial and not very constructive. And it’d also take an age! I have 4,000+ extended connections – probably not many compared to some! I did disconnect sites from Google when they decided to automatically add whatever sites THEY chose to my Google Profile, but I’ve never bothered to do anything more than that.
I want Google to do something useful and relevant with all that data, though. I’m leaving my own data that they have pretty much in tact until that day. But for now, I’ll just sit and watch what stuff they churn out, play with it a bit, and watch as it slowly disappears until they get the right mix.
In the meantime, I’ll probably continue to lock down personal networking sites and my public profile will remain purely professional (yawn!).
March 31st, 2011 on 1:42 PM
I think this is seriously interesting.
Personally I love social circle results, but I am fairly careful about who I follow and stuff, but have thus far found that I tend to trust the “shared” result much more than any others in a SERP. Kind of like the way twitter can act as your curated reader, I find most of the time SC results are like a curated SERP for me! What I have noticed though, is that I do tend to “banner blind” towards brand logos in the SERP, so if I search “sesNY” and see a result from SEW and another from MattMacGowan, I’d be pretty likely to click on the result from Matt.
Moving on to +1 though, I can’t wait to see how this develops. My concerns are – how natural a behaviour is it to provide feedback on-SERP? Who is really going to click back and +1 a good result/match? I think this will come into its own with the on-page button. If I search for “best price macbook pro” and see a result in the SERP with a +1 from Jay, then I would be all over that; because I know that Joanna has recently purchased a MacBook pro (because I’ve observed the commentary on FB and twitter), therefore doesn’t this actually close the loop on the social graph to some extent?
Google’s previous forays into social have been piss-poor, but this time this element is slightly one-dimensional and intrinsicly linked to what they do best (i.e. search) therefore actually a fitting move.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter what we say or do, because we’re the early adopters. Just like social circle all of this is dependent on broad user adoption for efficacy from a broad perspective.
March 31st, 2011 on 5:22 PM
[...] Sannino, Marketing Consultant /Content strateg… Joanna Butler wrote a great post here http://www.searchenginechocolate… -I couldn't agree more other than to add it's a hypocritical on Google's [...]
March 31st, 2011 on 7:45 PM
Nichola: well put. I really like your enthusiasm towards +1! I guess I’m a natural skeptic when it comes to Google’s moves, especially when they appear to mimic competitors. I like how you said it ‘closes the loop on the social graph’ though. That’ll make for some fun analytics sessions with social media!
Here’s to it working and with broad user adoption – I want it to afterall, regardless of the lack of carrots/chocolate
and the kinda fundamental on-site +1 button…
April 1st, 2011 on 12:51 AM
I find it all fascinating really, the immense power over data collection that Google has.
About .5 hour ago prior to my writing this, there is now an extension for all browsers–except IE–called +Like | have a look http://goo.gl/hPr5O
As far as my connection with Google Profiles is concerned, I know Dean seems adamant about this, but I did link it to my twitter account because I am not overly concerned with what I put out their through this medium as it is never anything personal. Anything else, no. One could say that I am overly cautious.
And for fun just to see if it would work, I saw that some people were able to set up a fully functional +1 button on their site, so I did it to, until Google pulled the plug across the web.
April 1st, 2011 on 6:28 AM
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April 4th, 2011 on 8:19 PM
[...] of course the rest of the world, but without a recognised social network behind it, Google +1 might be a tough sell to users.To start with the number of users that will be able to use this will be fairly limited, in fact [...]
April 6th, 2011 on 2:32 PM
[...] Google +1 is Missing a Social Carrot [...]
April 7th, 2011 on 11:23 PM
After reading my own article http://www.neo1seo.com/2011/04/google-1-is-a-scheme/ from April Fools which Joanna commented on(yay!) I was a little disappointed that I had wasted the topic on April Fools because +1 has so much potential from a marketing standpoint.
I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read that tweet listed above “Why would I “+1? a link to a page before I’ve seen whether I like it and why would I go back to the results if I’ve found the best result?”. I felt the same way but I also expect that there will be wordpress plugins etc that allow you to +1 a page from within the site.
Kudos on the great post and all the discussion around +1, I feel like I will be more inclined to invest serious time into researching the implications of +1 for SEO etc once the service is officially launched as opposed to its experimental status.
April 10th, 2011 on 10:35 AM
Alex: Haha I loved your April Fools post! Actually a couple of people thought +1 WAS an April Fools – that alone is hilarious!
I agree – I think that +1 will make a lot more sense when the buttons are launched. It seems really odd to launch +1 without them though. Apparently they’re “months away” from being public. But anyway – I’m looking forward to seeing some +1 stats from various GWT accounts! Will be interesting to see what page types get the most +1s… I suspect homepages might get the most followed by popular blog/news articles. Can’t see someone shopping spending time +1ing a product page, but I hope I’m wrong as it’d be great for ecommerce!
April 14th, 2011 on 1:40 PM
[...] Google +1 is Missing a Social Carrot [...]
April 22nd, 2011 on 5:21 PM
[...] Google +1 is Missing a Social Carrot [...]