Nearly a year after Facebook Like buttons spread out across the web, Google has announced its own rival, the +1 button. It launches today as part of Google’s search engine, allowing you to “+1″ the search results and ads that you like. And in a few months, it’ll be arriving at a web site near you.

Is +1 (pronounced “Plus One”) part of the new social network that Google’s long been rumored to be building? Or is +1 simply that “social layer” that Google has said would come and isn’t really meant as a rival to Facebook?

Yes.

Come along — let’s see how it works now, where it might go, and we’ll get into the bigger picture stuff at the end.

+1 Your Favorite Google Search Results

Beginning today, a small percentage of Google search users on Google.com in the United States searching in English will now see a +1 button next to search listings, when they are logged in. An example of this is shown below:

Don’t see it? Don’t panic. Unlike the iPad 2, +1 buttons are in plentiful supply. Just visit Google Experimental, where you can select an option to force it to appear in your searches.

Click on the button, and it lights up all colorfully:

When you’re done, you’ve “+1′d” it, as Google says, to your social network. Arguably, it might be correct to say “+1d” rather than “+1′d” — but I’ll save the Grammar Girl ruling for another time.

You’re also given an option to undo your +1ing, and you’re reminded that you’ve shared your liking of the result publicly to your social network.

There’s that mention of your social network again! Which social network? Your +1 social network, which is different than your Google Social Search network, which is different again from your Facebook network, your Twitter network and so on.

Don’t worry. I’ll get back to all this.

+1 Results From Your Network In Search

When you do a search when logged into Google, any results that you’ve +1′d — or which have been +1′d by those in your network — will be enhanced:

In the example above, you can see how one of the results coming up in a search for “nintendo” has two names attached to it. Those are two people in the searcher’s network who have liked this particular listing, plus the searcher is told there are 16 others in their network who like it.

In addition, if a search result has gained a lot of +1s but not from people in your network, you’ll still be told the total without anyone being named. That way, you can get a sense of how popular the page might be generally with +1 users.

Improving Search Results With Recommendations

The idea makes a lot of sense. If you’re searching, it’s nice to see if there are any answers that are recommended by your friends. Indeed, it makes so much sense that Google’s already been kind of offering this already through Google Social Search for nearly two years. But now these explicit recommendations become part of that.

“The primary benefit is that search gets better. It gets better in the user interface immediately, and we’ll look at it as a potential signal to improve search quality as well. I find social search extremely useful, especially with the recent updates. This change continues the evolution of social search, and it’s a natural progression to improve the search experience,” said Matt Cutts, a Google engineer who is most known for leading Google’s search spam fighting team but who also helped launch Google Social Search in 2009.

I’ll get back to how this fits into Google Social Search further below, as well as Bing’s Facebook-powered rival to that. But for now, let’s press on with more about how the new +1 works.

+1 For AdWords

Aside from Google’s search listings, you can also favorite ads from Google AdWords that show up in search results. Just click on the +1 buttons that will now show up next to them:

As with regular search results, any +1 favoring you do will show next to those ads, if others in your social network see them. And any +1s that they do on ads will be displayed for you.

Some FAQ For Advertisers & Site Owners

At this point, I can hear some advertisers going “Whaaaaat?!” We’ll have some follow-up articles soon here on Search Engine Land that look at what advertisers think about these +1 buttons showing up next to their ads.

For its part, Google tells me that it thinks advertisers will love this, that in testing it has done, clickthrough rates on +1′d ads go up, and that the company feels it’s unlikely that people will accidentally hit the ad link (costing the advertiser money) rather than the +1 button. Some other facts from Google:

• All ads will be getting these buttons
• There’s no way for advertisers to turn them off
• Clicks on the +1 button next to ads do NOT count as a paid ad click
• Advertisers will be able to see stats about which ads are getting the most +1s

Non-advertisers feeling left out on the stat front? Hang in there. Google told me that “soon after launch,” anyone registered with Google Webmaster Central will be able to see +1 stats for their non-paid or “organic” search listings.

Coming Soon: +1 For Web Sites

So far, I’ve covered how the +1 buttons work in Google’s search results. At the moment, that’s the only place you’ll see them. But “coming soon” (Google tells me in months, rather than weeks), publishers will be able to put these buttons on their web pages.

Yes, that’s right. Soon you’ll be able to add Google +1 buttons to your collection, along with Facebook’s Like buttons and Twitter’s Tweet buttons.

Google wouldn’t say much about how +1 buttons will work on web sites. For instance, if you come to a web site while logged in at Google, will you see if others in your network have +1′d a page you’re on, in the way Facebook Like buttons work?

No answer. Google is, I was told, is more focused on how +1 integrates with search right now.

Google did say that if someone does a +1 on a web page, then that will show up to others who find that page in search results. That’s going to be a huge bribe, in my view, for getting wide adoption of these buttons on web sites.

Still can’t wait? There’s a sign-up page at Google, where you can request being notified when the button is available.

Postscript: Clearly, Google does intend to personalize content on other sites. You can see this in the sign-up box below, in the Getting Started section. But Tom Critchlow also spotted how the personalization page provides more about this:

This sounds very similar to how Facebook Instant Personalization works, for the select sites that Facebook partners with, as well as how more broadly, a Facebook Like button will draw personalized content about friends from Facebook into a third-party web site.

Getting Started With +1

Ready to start +1ing things? You’ll need a Google Profile, to start. Chances are, you have one already, though you might not have pimped it out. See our previous article below for more about that:

• Hoping To Improve People Search, Google Launches “Profile Results”

From your profile page, you’ll need to opt-in to +1:

As I said earlier, if you don’t have this option showing automatically, visit Google Experimental, where you can make it appear for you.

After you’re enrolled, you’ll be able to manage all your +1s on a special “tab” of your profile that only you can see (unless you chose to make it public):

Now Google’s redesign of profile pages earlier this month of profile pages makes sense, eh?

Your +1 Social Network…

Let’s talk about your +1 social network now. When you enable +1, it will be made up of:

• People in your Gmail & Google Talk chat list
• People in your “My Contacts” group in Google Contacts
• People you follow in Google Reader or Google Buzz

What’s missing are people you are connected to via non-Google services, such as Twitter, Flickr or Quora. That’s something that will come in the future, Google says.

Indeed, we know that there are some “hidden” options that were added to Google Profiles recently, allowing you to connect those profiles to other social networking accounts. It could be that these will be enabled soon, as part of the +1 rollout.

Your Google Social Search Network

What’s confusing, perplexing or otherwise odd is that Google already allows you to create a social network that combines contacts from Google-based services (such as Google Buzz) with your networks from third-party sites like Twitter.

Google does this as part of its Google Social Search service. This combined network used to be called your “Social Circle” on Google, back when Google Social Search launched formally in January 2010 (it was an experiment before that). That launch also provided a way to view your social circle.

You can still view your social circle here on Google, but now these are called your “social connections.” I’m not sure when the name was changed, but I suspect it was dropped fairly recently, in the wake of a rumor earlier this month that Google was about to launch a “Google Circles” social network. Google’s help page still talks about your “social circle.”

All your social connections are used to help power Google Social Search results. But only your Google-based connections, right now, will power +1 matches within Social Search. Officially, Google says this is because it wants to start conservatively with +1, ramp up slowly and make sure everything works.

Google Social Search, Now With +1 Recommendations

It was just over a month ago that Google massively overhauled Google Social Search, which is a way that Google shows things that those in your social network have created or shared that are relevant to searches you do. In fact, we had a big giant article all about it:

• Google’s Search Results Get More Social; Twitter As The New Facebook “Like”

Here’s an example of how Google Social Search works:

In that example, I did a search for “Corona del Mar bakery.” One of the pages that came up had been shared by someone I know and follow on Twitter, Amy Senk, so this was highlighted to me with a little “Amy Senk shared this on Twitter” message.

There were no buttons involved. Amy didn’t explicitly choose to recommend this page to others on her social network, via Google. Instead, Google Social Search saw she shared it through another network and used that, along with her connection to me, to highlight the page.

Now Google Social Search will gain +1 recommendations, content that people are explicitly recommending using Google’s +1 buttons. Google Social Search remains, but in addition to the first two items below, it now gains a third feature:

1. Show content created by those in your social network
2. Show content shared by those in your social network
3. Show content recommended by those in your Google +1 network

Social search signals, including the new +1 recommendations, will also continue to influence the first two things below plus power the new, third option:

1. Influence the ranking of results, causing you to see things others might not, based on your social connections
2. Influence the look of results, showing names of those in your social network who created, shared or now recommend a link
3. Influence the look of results, showing an aggregate number of +1s from all people, not just your social network, for some links

What Happens To Google Buzz?

Just over a year ago, Google launched Google Buzz, which initially looked to be Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare all wrapped into one. That is, it allowed for:

• Foursquare-like “check-ins”
• Facebook-like “newsfeed” of activity by friends
• Quick Twitter-like “updates”

None of this really took off. For example, consider that since the beginning of the year until now, according to figures from Google Buzz that I track:

• Mashable has gained about 100,000 Twitter followers versus about 100 Buzz followers
• TechCrunch has gained about 100,000 Twitter followers versus about 90 Buzz followers
• Robert Scoble has gained about 17,000 Twitter followers versus about 300 Buzz followers
• Search Engine Land has gained about 8,000 Twitter followers versus 51 Buzz followers

I wouldn’t say Buzz is dead, but it certainly isn’t buzzing. Any Foursquare-like pretensions seems to have been off-loaded onto the on-going location battle between Google Latitude, Google Hotpot, Google Places and Google Maps. Google itself isn’t sure which will win there, or even if there will be one winner.

Buzz does continue to provide a way to issue updates and get them from your network. But it clearly has nowhere near the activity of either Twitter or Facebook.

I suspect Buzz will be allowed to sit doing not much of anything, as +1 starts to build around in and perhaps replace it. Certainly one of the first things to go will be the Buzz buttons that you occasionally spot on the web.

Using +1 buttons is far more compelling. Those promise to increase your site’s visibility in Google’s incredibly popular search results, rather than in the little used Google Buzz area.

Finally, there’s giant irony. Earlier today, Google agreed to have its privacy controls audited over the next 20 years, in a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission over privacy mistakes with the Google Buzz launch.

What About Google Me Or Emerald Sea?

Meanwhile, we’ve had rumor-after-rumor that Google is building a new social network beyond Google Buzz, one especially meant to challenge Facebook.

There was Google Me, said to be a full-blown Facebook challenger, in the middle of last year. By the end of the year, an internal product name of Emerald Sea started floating around. It was also rumored to be called +1. There was speculation that +1 would be the name of a new toolbar for the Google site — or a Chrome extension — or related to video conferencing.

Google’s standard response for about the past six months or so now has been to deny that it’s building a social network at all. Instead, the company has talked about adding social “layers” into everything at Google.

When I asked about the various past rumors, and how they relate to today’s launch, I got back a statement continuing the “layers” theme:

As we’ve already been saying, we’re committed to making the web more people-centric, and we’ve been gradually giving people new ways to share things and interact within our products. This is just another example of how we’re centering our products around the millions of people who use them every day.Our focus is on improving our search results–to ensure we get the most relevant results to our users as quickly as possible. Relationships and recommendations are one way to help us achieve that goal–and this is what today’s announcement is all about.

Reading Between The Lines

Here’s the thing about Google’s claim that it’s not building a rival social network. When rumors started emerging about Google Checkout, Google made similar claims about how it wasn’t some type of PayPal rival. It was.

Google might have convinced itself it’s not building a social network, but +1 certainly seems to be a good start toward one. While it is beginning as a “layer” that’s part of search, those +1 buttons — when they hit the web — will put Google directly alongside Facebook in the “liking” game.

All the excitement that some had — and still have — about how Facebook’s Like buttons were going to give the company amazing insight about the web? Now Google’s on track to potentially get the same.

The New PageRank?

Google, of course, has already had more insight into the entire web than Facebook, even without having a Like button rival. That’s because despite the popularity of Facebook’s buttons, not every page on the web has Like buttons. There are tens of billions of web pages out there. The web is huge! Nor does everyone on the web push those buttons.

In contrast, Google’s toolbar data alone gives it insight into how much people “like” particular pages just by measuring time on site. It can also measure things like bounce rate from its search results to sites, and counting links to measure popularity still isn’t dead. These are just some of the tools Google has.

Still, recording explicit likes (or +1s,  or whatever) has value, especially in a time when the way Google has primarily relied on determining if a page is good — looking at links — has become very creaky. People continue buy links, spam links or not give links to sites that deserve them (Wikipedia takes, but none of its outbound links give back to deserving sites).

If links were like votes originally, then likes are also votes — but more trusted ones, especially when they are heavily used within someone’s specific social network (friends don’t generally spam friends).

In short, +1 becomes the new PageRank. OK, that’s kind of catchy, but more accurately, +1 recommendations can become an important new signal for Google to use as part of its overall ranking algorithm, during a time when it desperately needs new signals.

searchengineland.com

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Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

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iCrossing has a list of brands that come up when you enter each letter of the alphabet (not all are brands, but many are). A is for Amazon (not Apple), B is for Bank of America, M is for Mapquest (not Microsoft), N is for Netflix, P is for Pandora, V is for Verizon, and Y is for Yahoo.

You must keep in mind, however, that the instant results are personalized. Google takes into account things like your location and your surfing habits when providing you results.

Google Instant doesn’t necessarily make things any easier on small businesses, but it’s showing big brands in cases where Google probably would’ve suggested big brands anyway. If users do a lot of local searches, it’s possible that Google could show more local results (including small businesses) for those users, I’m speculating.

Steve Rubel says that Google Instant makes SEO irrelevant. “Here’s what this means,” he says. “No two people will see the same web. Once a single search would do the trick – and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work. Now, with this, everyone is going to start tweaking their searches in real-time. The reason this is a game changer is feedback. When you get feedback, you change your behaviors.”

He’s not wrong about that, but I’m not sure that makes SEO irrelevant. Google has been showing different results to different users for quite a while now. This is really just an extension of that.

Businesses might want to try (and have other people try) doing searches for keywords that they would expect people to use to find their site. See what comes up (keep in mind the personalization) and work from there. Easier said than done no doubt, but it’s something to consider. Think about what kinds of people will be interested in your products and what other kind of searches they might be doing. It’s not a science, but again, perhaps something worth considering. It might mean getting to know your customers better, which can’ t be a bad thing anyway. Maybe it means asking them to take surveys. Maybe it doesn’t.

The whole thing doesn’t help organic SEO’s case in the old SEO vs PPC debate. I’ll give Rubel that.

Speaking of PPC, Google says Google Instant changes the way it counts impressions. “It’s possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels,” says Google’s Dan Friedman. “However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need.”

Trevor Claiborne of the Google Analytics Team says that Analytics users might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and traffic for organic keywords. “For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward,” he says.

He says, however that over time, it could change SEO. “The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time,” says Cutts. “For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.”

Google Instant will likely become increasingly important to search marketing, because not only will it roll out to more countries (it’s starting in the U.S. and a select few others), but it will soon come to mobile and browser search boxes. Each of these factors will greatly increase how often Instant results are displayed.

The mobile factor actually has implications for Google retaining a substantial amount of mobile searches in general. The better (and quicker) Google can give results on any kind of query, the less reason users have to go to different apps to acquire certain information.

Google clearly said that ranking stays the same with Google Instant, but it will change the way people search. It will affect their search behavior, and that is what search marketers are going to have to think about more than ever. You should also consider that some people will simply deactivate the feature, leaving them open to Google’s standard results.

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Have you been hearing all the talk about the Mayday update and all the fallout?  I’m going to break it all down and tell you what it means and what you need to do.  Let me just start with a quick overview for beginners.

If you own a website, you want top rankings.  With more than 8 out of 10 people using search engines to find what they need online, you are missing out if your site isn’t ranked well in the engines.

We can all agree on that!  So, how do you get those coveted top rankings?

While I wish the answer was “magic fairy dust” but it’s not that simple (which is too bad because I happen to have a fresh supply of fairy dust – my niece shared it with me!).

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your site for the engines.  Don’t know what SEO is?  Then likely your site isn’t optimized and missing out on traffic.

Already had your site optimized in the past? That’s great and it’s a start but SEO requires on-going efforts on your site to gain and increase rankings.

Why?

Because the engines frequently make changes to their algorithms (the formula used to determine how to rank your site in the search engine results pages [SERPs]).  We’ve heard rumors that Google changes their crawling/indexing or ranking algorithm as often as once a day.  Sometimes these tweaks are minor and other times they are bigger and the impact is widely felt by webmasters and site owners.

Here is an explanation of what’s going on from Ex-Googler Vanessa Fox:

“Last week at Google I/O, I was on a panel with Googler Matt Cutts who said, when asked during Q&A,  ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”

I asked Google for more specifics and they told me that it was a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which seems to imply that sites getting less traffic still have their pages indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly as before. Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic.

This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite. Based on Matt’s comment at Google I/O, the pages that are now ranking well for these long tail queries are from “higher quality” sites (or perhaps are “higher quality” pages).

What’s a site owner to do? It can be difficult to create compelling content and attract links to these types of pages. My best suggestion to those who have been hit by this is to isolate a set of queries for which the site now is getting less traffic and check out the search results to see what pages are ranking instead. What qualities do they have that make them seen as valuable? For instance, I have no way of knowing how amazon.com has faired during this update, but they’ve done a fairly good job of making individual item pages with duplicated content from manufacturer’s databases unique and compelling by the addition of content like of user reviews. They have set up a fairly robust internal linking (and anchor text) structure with things like recommended items and lists. And they attract external links with features such as the my favorites widget.

From the discussion at the Google I/O session, this is likely a long-term change so if your site has been impacted by it, you’ll likely want to do some creative thinking around how you can make these types of pages more valuable (which should increase user engagement and conversion as well).”

More notes that Fox got from Matt Cutts at Google.  This update:

•    has nothing to do with the “Caffeine” update (an infrastructure change that is not yet fully rolled out).
•    is entirely algorithmic (and isn’t, for instance, a manual flag on individual sites).
•    impacts long tail queries more than other types
•    was fully tested and is not temporary

More good advice from Fox:

“Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent changes are one reason Google itself downplays algorithm updates. Focus on what Google is trying to accomplish as it refines things (the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers) and you’ll generally avoid too much turbulence in your organic search traffic.”
(Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-mayday-update-impacts-long-tail-traffic-43054)

The Take Away Here?

This isn’t the end of “long tail” – which is something people are spouting on Blogs and ezines the past few weeks (someone is always declaring the death of something SEO related.  SEO has more lives than a cat because it’s outlived many proclaimed deaths!)

Optimization is important to get top rankings – but optimization does not mean manipulating the current “hot button” or “hot topic item” that everyone is speculating about with the algorithm.

Consistent site updates, high quality relevant content and good on-page optimization and clean code, as well as earning links because your site is a good site (and not because you play a link exchange game or belong to a link network) are the way to get top rankings.

Rankings aren’t constant and you do need to maintain them and weather some storms but the sites that don’t fall for the latest rankings ploys are the ones that do better long term.

These days most site owners realize they can’t just rely on Google alone for traffic and they are looking to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to help boost their exposure online.

So your action plan?

•    Check your stats and see if you were in fact impacted by the Mayday update (did you lose traffic from some long tail phrases).
•    Check out your linking practices and make sure you haven’t done any shady linking lately.
•    Look at your link strategy and make sure you are passing link juice to your internal pages.
•    Bulk up your internal pages with unique content and quality info (other than just manufacturer supplied product info)
•    Make sure you have a Facebook Fan Page/Business Page
•    Get going on Twitter
•    Contact me for a no obligation consultation or SEO and Social Media proposal if you aren’t where you need to be!

One final thought: while it’s important to stay current and be aware of changes, it’s just as important not to freak out and start making too many changes.  If you are using a strong and stable SEO strategy that covers the fundamentals, then you will be just fine for the long haul.

Author of this Article is Jennifer Horowitz

She is also the director of Marketing on Twitter

www.ecombuffet.com

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I’ve already accomplished what the big blog promotion blogs said cannot be done in under 6 months, in less than 2 weeks.  The joke is on them. As I’ve said in some of my previous posts, the old dated ways of getting on the search engine front page for your niche keywords are out the window.

I’ve re-invented the wheel on getting my blog on the front page on google for many keywords. I am on the coveted first and second page after only 2 weeks; for the keywords I targeted. That one week includes five minutes for my partner to set up the blog.

My partner is the world’s fastest blog creator, absolutely amazing. She can set up your blog up and have it online is under five minutes. If you need her services leave me a comment and I will send you a email with her contact info.

As I have said in some of my previous blog promotion posts if you want to achieve front page status for your blog keyword of choice you need to use my blog promotion tips. There are a few insider blog promotion tips I haven’t written about yet that helped me to achieve these amazingly impossible blog promotion feats. I just haven’t had the time to address them yet in my blog promotion articles.

My site is a PR 0 and I am on the front page of google. This time next year I will be a PR 5 or PR 6 easily, you can quote me on this. I will walk down all the blog promotion competitions with the greatest of ease. Happy Blogging to me !!

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