The +1 button for websites: recommend content across the web
Since we started rolling out the +1 button in March, you've been able to recommend content to your friends and contacts directly from Google search results and ads. — But sometimes you want to +1 a page while you're on it.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google launched the +1 button in March 2011 as a way to recommend content from inside search results and ads; this move moves the same endorsement action onto publishers' own pages, so a visitor can +1 a site while reading it rather than only after seeing it ranked. It is also Google's second swing at web-page sharing — its 2007 Shared Stuff bookmarking feature quietly faded, and the +1 button is a far more prominent retry with search distribution behind it.
The competitive framing is explicit in the surrounding coverage: Google has been characterized as chasing Facebook in social networking, after an attempt to partner with Facebook fell through and Facebook aligned with Microsoft instead. A recommendation button embedded across the open web is Google's answer to building social signals without a social network of its own.
First-order effects
- Publishers and webmasters gain a one-line embed that pipes visitor endorsements directly into Google search results and ads, making the button an immediate SEO and ad-annotation lever.
Second-order effects
- Every +1 click hands Google social-graph data collected off its own properties, strengthening the search-and-ads feedback loop at exactly the moment it lacks a social platform of its own — pressure Facebook cannot ignore on third-party publishing surfaces.
Third-order effects
- If recommendation buttons become default publisher furniture, search quality increasingly blends algorithmic ranking with friend endorsements, concentrating the underlying identity and social data in a few platforms — an outcome consistent with analysis at the time holding that Apple and Google will control digital identity.
The trend: Search engines are folding social recommendations gathered from across the web into rankings and ads, turning every publisher page into a collection point for platform-owned social signals.