Share buttons have been around for a while and are designed to easily allow readers of your blog to share a post they like with friends. Rather than having to copy the link and create a new tweet or status update, share buttons allow for users to share something via Facebook or Twitter with a single click. The two most common share buttons are the Facebook “like” button and the twitter button with a bird icon. Chances are if you have spent any length or time browsing the Internet you’ve seen these buttons multiple times.
What Is Google +1?
Just over a month ago search engine superstar Google released its own version of a share button they call +1. Google +1 works essentially like all of the other share buttons in that it’s easily added to your blog and then an icon shaped like a folder with a “+1″ written across it is placed on the page. How it works is that a signed in Google accounts user is then more likely to see the page that received a plus one in their search results along with an annotation of the name of those users who pressed the +1 button. This in effect is every SEO professionals dream in many ways. If a user has a far enough reach than they can start directly effecting search results and cause a popular page to get more views faster.
The Shake Up
Bright Edge is an enterprise grade SEO analyzing tool that looks at some of the largest websites on the Internet and reports back information such as trends and suggestions for growth. According to Bright Edge, despite still only being a few months old the Google +1 button has already over taken the Tweet button in terms of both popularity and growth. The Bright Edge analysis found that Google +1 is receiving month after month a 33% increase in web placement and as of the end of June is featured on 4.4% of analyzed websites. The twitter share button, for comparison, was only featured on 3.4% of websites a full one-percentage point discrepancy.
Perspective
All things told both websites are lagging far behind the adoption of the Facebook “like” button, which was featured on 20% of the websites on the Bright Edge test. Even so, anyone concerned with the use of share buttons on their website may want to place a +1 button along side that Facebook and Twitter button or they are missing out on potential traffic.
