+1 Metrics Included in WMT

[AnkitMaheshwari]

I am seeing a new "+1 Metrics" tab in the Google Webmaster Tool.

This has further sub-sections as

Search Impact
Activity
Audience

The +1 button and the Google+ project are both about making it easier to connect with the people you trust online. For the +1 button, that means bringing advice from trusted friends and contacts right into Google search, letting the users who love your web content recommend it at the moment of decision.

But when you’re managing a website, it's usually not real until you can measure it. So we’re happy to say we’ve got one more announcement to make -- today we’re releasing reports that show you the value +1 buttons bring to your site.

First, +1 metrics in Google Webmaster Tools can show you how the +1 button affects the traffic coming to your pages:

[analytics.blogspot.com...]

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 11:26 am (utc) on Jun 30, 2011]
[edit reason] added link and quote [/edit]

[limoshawn]

I'm going to make a fake plusone button:

[+1] {5,000,123 people +1'd this, what's your problem?]

then when someone clicks on it they get sent to a youtube video of sheep on a hillside.

[Optimus]

Yep, it is like blackmail...and I just paid the ransom...what else can you do when you got a gun to your head?

[rlange]

limoshawn wrote:

Does +1 affect my site’s performance in search?
Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1’s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality. For +1's, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.

Seems like a little more than a hint...

The first part of that answer sounds like it's only a factor in personalized search, and only if you're logged in to your Google Account. The second part, though, is non-specific.

Still, I think the line, "This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking," says it all.

I also think some people here are over-reacting in both directions, but those who dove in with the claims of blackmail and a gun to your head? Please. Have a little perspective.

--
Ryan

[aristotle]

then when someone clicks on it they get sent to a youtube video of sheep on a hillside

Are these the same sheep that are putting these buttons on their websites?

[limoshawn]

sheep, sheep, we are all sheep.

wait till (if it hasn't happened already) someone starts putting up fake "like" and "plusone" buttons that install bad stuff. it's not really F or G's fault but when you start training people to do stuff like this it makes it easy...

[netmeg]

Well first of all, none of the +1 stuff means a damn thing until Google starts educating normal people (by which I mean people who are not us) as to what the +1 button is, and why and when and where they want to use it. But they haven't. Crickets. I just removed all the +1 buttons from my site because they look ridiculous next to tweet buttons with hundreds of tweets and like buttons with 3000 or more likes. Because over a million and a half pageviews, there were only (3) +1's - and two of em were me.

[indyank]

netmeg, educating people! oh come on. What is in it for the normal people to log in and +1 any page? No wonder you see that kind of stats. Given this fact, when I see loads of +1s on the popular news sites, it looks so cheap and sheep to me.

[rlange]

indyank wrote:
netmeg, educating people! oh come on. What is in it for the normal people to log in and +1 any page? No wonder you see that kind of stats. Given this fact, when I see loads of +1s on the popular news sites, it looks so cheap and sheep to me.

How is this different from Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc?

--
Ryan

[indyank]

loads of difference and I have already registered several of them in my previous posts and shares here.

[tangor]

+1 just seems to be another way for Google to get info from WEBMASTERS, not just "likes"... You have to install phone home code and that gives them more... data.

With so many dropping adsense and adwords (or having been banned or simply "out of biz" since Panda... how else is G going to get data?

From the +1 Button Policy:

Google may analyze Publishers' use of the +1 Button, including to ensure Publishers’ compliance with these policies and to facilitate Google’s development of the +1 Button. By using the +1 Button, Publishers give Google permission to utilize an automated software program (often called a "web crawler") to retrieve and analyze websites associated with the +1 Button.

Not interested in adding any more JS from third parties to slow down my site, nor do I have to worry about folks running NoScript or JS turned off (worry in that regard would be not getting reporting information at GWT). I just prefer to run a clean, fast site and concentrate on the site content and the user experience.

[Shatner]

>>>Because over a million and a half pageviews, there were only (3) +1's - and two of em were me.

You can remove the feature that has it show the +1 count. That's the only reasonable thing to do, otherwise you look bad because no one uses it.

[MarvinH]

I like the minimalistic style of my site. I like my pages to contain the bare minimum. I definitely would not consider adding site-wide links and javascrips to some 3rd-party topic-unrelated websites like FaceBook, Twitter, Digg, Google/+1, etc. As far as I'm concerned, that only benefits those sites, not me. JS files would only slow my pages down, and the image icons would act as an unneeded distraction.

[lucy24]

allowing people to share and recommend your content is simply good, common sense

Last time I looked, there was nothing to prevent people from sharing and recommending by any means of their choice.

Maybe I would see it differently if I had a vast pool of friends who all think exactly alike, so it would be impossible to single out individuals for the "Just saw this and knew it would appeal to you too" e-mails. Or I if fervently believed in never hiding anything from business competitors, so if I found the world's best site for wholesale widgets, I'd want everyone to know about it.

:: weird mental association here with prayer-in-the-classroom arguments ::

[tedster]

nothing to prevent people from sharing and recommending by any means of their choice

And socially savvy sites can make that easy to do in many ways. If you have user comments, let there be a url that takes a link directly to a specific comment, for instance. Make sure any scripting/AJAX doesn't offer any URL confusion for naive sharing, and so on.

[Tallon]

The underground mommy blog forums are organizing click groups as we speak so I figured something was up. They were working on google's block domain a few months ago and now it's +1'ing. They own twitter and facebook, now it's google's turn.

If your niche is: recipes, cooking, parenting, coupons, organizing, gardening, crafts, saving money/frugal, diy, fashion, homeschooling, blogging (and moving into seo and social media marketing), heads up cause you're about to be hit with a 2x4.

[Hugene]

The underground mommy blog forums are organizing click groups as we speak so I figured something was up. They were working on google's block domain a few months ago and now it's +1'ing. They own twitter and facebook, now it's google's turn.

If your niche is: recipes, cooking, parenting, coupons, organizing, gardening, crafts, saving money/frugal, diy, fashion, homeschooling, blogging (and moving into seo and social media marketing), heads up cause you're about to be hit with a 2x4.

LOL, I almost pissed my pants laughing in front of my computer at work.

On a serious note, how the hell did we go from a world of indexing HTML pages to a world of tracking absolutely every move a person does on the web. 10 years it took. Man the future is coming upon us so quick.

As for the social tracking plugin in G Analytics, it sucks that we have to implement extra code, to make it work with FB, Tweeter and other (crap) buttons. Professional webmaster will do it, but amateur ones won't waste their time. And will eventually end-up loosing more and more in the SERPS, by consistently missing-out on the new signals that the big G starts to use in its SERPS.

[rlange]

Hugene wrote:
As for the social tracking plugin in G Analytics, it sucks that we have to implement extra code, to make it work with FB, Tweeter and other (crap) buttons. Professional webmaster will do it, but amateur ones won't waste their time. And will eventually end-up loosing more and more in the SERPS, by consistently missing-out on the new signals that the big G starts to use in its SERPS.

I think it's been said more than few times that Google doesn't use data gathered through Google Analytics in its ranking calculations.

Does anyone have any evidence that this has changed?

--
Ryan

[EarWig]

Whats Next!
A -1 button for people who don't like your site?

[EarWig]

Google +1 Help Page
[google.com ]

Adding the +1 button to a site
How do I add the +1 button to my site?
Just grab a snippet of code.

Link doesn't work! LOL - goes to Google Home page.

[rlange]

EarWig wrote:
Whats Next!
A -1 button for people who don't like your site?

They already have something like that. Do a search, click on a result, then hit the Back button within a few seconds. You'll notice that there's now a "Block all www.example.com results" link next to the "Cached" link.

That's per-site, though, and the +1 is per-page, so it's probably more like a "-5 button".

--
Ryan