Are Google+ and +1 Going to Change Web Marketing?

Larry Page, the CEO of Google Inc., declared Google+ stats: More than 10 million users of Google+ share and receive more than 1 billion items each day. Plus the G+1 button is served more than 2 billion times each day. A remarkable milestone indeed! But in Social media, the context of usage is more important than the numbers, and so we’ll see how the new wave goes.

Before we begin the discussion about the impact of +1 on SEO, it is best to make it clear that it is not going to ruin SEO services, but rather add another level to them.

Just like Twitter and Facebook, Google+1 has also got its own button now. This has a big impact on SEO. In fact, Google has added +1 tracker to webmaster tools using +1 metrics. For any URL, the +1’s come from all web sources. This includes paid results, organic search results, Google+, and the +1 buttons that you have used on your website or blog.

+1 on paid results do not cost extra to the advertisers- they appear automatically. This is actually good for them as it opens doors to many businesses, allowing them to merge their PPC and SEO marketing campaigns.

Google finds your URL
There are three ways in which Google can locate your URL:

1.+1 button code
It doesn’t have a link inside the tag by default. So if it isn’t changed, Google will search for the second step.

2. Canonical link

The link that is displayed here is of an outsourced call center website and not of a specific web page. In many cases, the canonical code is not present in web pages. So in that case, Google will go to step 3 and look for the web page URL that is shown in the address bar of the browser.

3. Address bar
As the last step, Google will look in the address bar of the browser to get the URL.

Against spamming
We know that Google has always been against spam. Take a quick look at all the big social networks and you will see that they have a lot of irrelevant content and spam, thereby making genuine content publishers struggle to get high organic results.

But as far as the +1 button is concerned, you can only give +1 when you are logged into a Google account. When you click on it once, you vote it up, and when you click on it twice, you un-vote it. So no matter how many times you click it, you can only get it up by 1 only.

And if you click too many times, Google tracks your IP address and displays a Captcha to prevent malicious activity.

Google Chrome already has the +1 extension, so we can +1 any web page- even if it does not have a +1 button installed. The difference between the +1 button and Facebook ‘like’ button is that Google has total control over its +1 button.

The verdict
+1 will make the search results more credible and relevant. It will fight spam and give more options to genuine publishers. In short, it is great for SEO, and it’s time for web marketing enthusiasts to take the Google+ project seriously.”