Recently Google announced the plus one button, and lately I’ve been seeing little notes on different Google pages telling me I should add the plus one (+1) button to my site. I decided to go ahead and take Google’s recommendation and add the plus one button to my site, what have I got to lose right?
I found a plugin for WordPress called Google +1 Button which makes adding the button easy. The plugin is simple enough, install it, then select how you want the widget to look.
After I installed it I started to wonder why I haven’t seen the plus one button in my Google search results.
Apparently the feature isn’t enabled by default yet, it’s still a Google labs experiment. In order to enable the feature you have to opt in.
After opting in to the experiment the plus one button will start showing up in the search results pages.
What happens when someone clicks plus one?
I’m sure lots of magic happens behind the scenes but here is what happens from the users prospective.
If you are signed in to your Google account the plus one will be recorded in your public Google profile. Depending on your privacy settings anyone can see all of the sites that you click plus one for. If you are not signed in to a Google account you will be asked to sign in, or create a new account.
The basic idea behind plus one seems pretty cool, sites you vote up have a chance to appear in the search results for other people in your plus one network. Whether this idea will actually work or not remains to be determined.
Why not check it out for yourself? Click the plus one button on this post and give it a try.
Update – 6/29/11
More details are starting to come out about Google’s plans for +1, now officially called Google+. Huffington Post has an article that explains the current state of their new social network. Basically they are in “Field Trial” mode and the network is invitation only.
You can sign up to be noftified when Google+ launches by visiting Google+project. In the mean time you can still join the the +1 button experiment in Google labs. Sites that you ‘plus one’ will show up in your Google profile.
