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Google’s +1 button arrived almost 90 days ago to lots of fanfare and speculative blog posts. I sat and I waited and I watched. I read the opinions. I watched Google search results evolve. And I clicked a few +1 buttons on articles I liked. Oddly enough, in all the opinions I’ve read, my take hasn’t appeared and thus I wonder if I’m off kilter. Nevertheless, here it goes…
Google’s +1 cannot succeed without the support of the mainstream sites. Think Yahoo, Yahoo News, MSN, USA Today, etc. If I must, I’ll add Facebook too, but this is really about “traditional” mainstream sites. In my mind, the mainstream sites are never going to integrate a +1 button into their articles. Why? Because they all have alliances with other search providers (ahem, Bing, Yahoo Search, AOL).
In a very broad perspective, and taking out all the deal sites and cute kittens, the articles that are most commonly shared on the web are from news sites – New York Times, HuffingtonPost, CNN, etc. In addition, if you’re not on the bleeding edge nor is your homepage Google, then it’s probably Yahoo, MSN or AOL. In those articles, while there may be a “Like” and “Tweet this” button and even a “Share,” there is certainly no +1.
Sure, you can +1 anything within Google’s search results, but you can’t +1 them on the actual site. How many are +1’ing things based on a snippet of text or finding something they want to +1 via Google search results? I have a feeling it’s a small majority.
Unless Share This integrates a +1 option into their offerings AND the mainstream sites don’t notice nor remove the option, then I have a hard time envisioning sites larger than personal blogs hoping for an SEO leg up integrating +1 into their site offerings.
What do you think? Is their +1 functionality that I’m missing? Is their an incentive for the mainstream sites to ever add a +1?
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