Thursday, March 31, 2011

Google's +1

via Chris Dixon's blog.
"Google's +1 button is a smart move and what I was hoping they would launch. The real power will come when sites embed +1 buttons prominently to get better organic search rankings.  Yes, I realize users might prefer to share via FB vs Google and hence prefer FB Like buttons, but the countervailing force is that websites will have a greater incentive to get users to press +1 over Like.  Think of it like retail, where -- while it does matter which products consumers prefer -- it also matter how much and which shelf space the store allocates to each the product.  FB has an advantage with users ("consumers like the product more"), but Google has an advantage with websites (they'll get better "shelf space")."
I've been dying for something like this from Google for a long time because the Ben's Friends Patient Support Network depends on people finding us in Google. Can you imagine how frustrating it is for someone who has just been diagnosed with a rare disease to go home and comb through 200 search results before finding a support community? This drives us crazy and I feel terrible for the patients.

Facebook implemented it's Like button about 6 months ago and in about 3 days our bigger networks were racking up 500+ Likes. That made it really easy to find us in Facebook. We get a ton of traffic from Facebook now and it's really helped. I think this +1 feature will be even bigger for us. I'm glad Google finally rolled it out.