Is Google +1 Button The Next Ranking Signal?

With the unveiling of Google +1, many are asking, is Google trying to duplicate Facebook “Like”button with their Google +1? Google revealed their new social layer Google +1 which they have mentioned repeatedly over the last several months. It looks like Google's social strategy just got a lot closer to Facebook's social strategy. Facebook made huge success when it launched its Open Graph and social plugins which includes the Like Button. Now, nearly a year later, Google is apparently trying to duplicate that.



Do you think Google can duplicate Facebook's success with the "like" button?



Introducing Google +1 Button







The video shows that Google +1 is all about putting a little "+1" button all over the web, in search results, and in ads. It's not quite as catchy as Facebook’s "like", which makes me think that right out of the box, this will not get clicked nearly as much as Facebook's iconic button.

Google +1's are public. Google may show them to any signed-in user who has a social connection to one. However, users can still choose not to have them displayed publicly on their Google Profile.



Does the +1 Button Make the Google Buzz Button Obsolete?



Many will think that with the launching of Google +1, this makes the Google Buzz button obsolete, but Google doesn't think so. According to Google:

"Buzz button[s] are used for starting conversations about interesting web content ('Hey guys, what do you think about this news story?'). +1 buttons recommend web content to people in the context of search results ('Peng +1'd this page'), and +1's from social connections can help improve the relevance of the results you see in Google Search. Soon, you'll be able to use the +1 button, or the Buzz button, or both—pick what's right for your content."

Big News for Search With Google +1



Of course Google puts a major search spin on +1, indicating that it's all about making search results more relevant (this could be achieved with Facebook likes, if the company politics weren't in the way). To recommend something, all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful. These +1's will then start appearing in Google's search results.



When a user searches, while signed in, their search result snippets may be annotated with the names of their connections who have "+1'd" the page. When none of the user's connections have +1'd a page, the snippet may display the aggregate number of +1's the page has received.



Google’s project manager Rob Spiro said:

"Our goal at Google is to get you the most relevant results as quickly as possible. But relevance is about relationships as well as words on webpages. That's why we recently started to include more information from people you know—stuff they've shared on Twitter, Flickr and other sites—in Google search results."



"Today we're taking that a step further, enabling you to share recommendations with the world right in Google's search results."



"Say, for example, you're planning a winter trip to Tahoe, Calif," he adds. "When you do a search, you may now see a +1 from your slalom-skiing aunt next to the result for a lodge in the area. Or if you're looking for a new pasta recipe, we'll show you +1's from your culinary genius college roommate. And even if none of your friends are baristas or caffeine addicts, we may still show you how many people across the web have +1'd your local coffee shop."

Google says it uses "many signals" to identify the most useful recommendations, such as people you are connected to through Google (contacts, people in your Google Talk chat list, people you follow in Google Reader and Buzz). Google also says it may start using other signals like Twitter connections. You can always look at you "social circle" on Google's Dashboard to see who you're actually connected to.



Obviously a Google account is required for +1. In fact, a Google Profile is also required. On the Google Profile, you'll see all of the +1s you've clicked (again, kind of like "likes" on the Facebook Wall).



Google's David Byttow, software engineer for the +1 button said:

"We think sharing on the web can be even better--that people might share more recommendations, more often, if they knew their advice would be used to help their friends and contacts right when they're searching for relevant topics on Google."



"We expect that these personalized annotations will help sites stand out by showing users which search results are personally relevant to them," he says. "As a result, +1's could increase both the quality and quantity of traffic to the sites people care about."

What do you think of Google +1?

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Google Algorithm Update – Is Bounce Rate a Ranking Signal?

Is bounce rate now considered as part of a website ranking criteria? After the release of the data about the Panda winners and losers in the UK, SearchMetrics said:

“It seems that all the loser sites are sites with a high bounce rate and a less time on site ratio. Price comparison sites are nothing more than a search engine for products. If you click on a product you ‘bounce’ to the merchant. So if you come from Google to ciao.co.uk listing page, than you click on an interesting product with a good price and you leave the page. On Voucher sites it is the same. And on content farms like ehow you read the article and mostly bounce back to Google or you click Adsense.”

“And on the winners are more trusted sources where users browse and look for more information,” the firm added. “Where the time on site is high and the page impressions per visit are also high. Google’s ambition is to give the user the best search experience. That’s why they prefer pages with high trust, good content and sites that showed in the past that users liked them.”

WebmasterWorld Founder Brett Tabke wrote in a recent forum post, discussing what he calls the “Panda metric“, that:

“Highly successful, high referral, low bounce, quality, and historical pages have seen a solid boost with panda.”

Google’s Matt Cutts recent video on ranking in 2011 talks about increasing site speed, and how this can keep users on your site longer (IE: not bouncing), you can increase your ROI. Speed is a ranking signal. We know that. Speed can reduce bounce rate. Even if Google doesn’t use bounce rate directly, there is a strong relationship here.







Matt McGee at SearchEngineLand said:

“It’s important to note how Google defines Bounce Rate,” he adds. This is below:



“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.”

He also points to how it is defined in Google Analytics:

“The percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page.”



“Personally, I don’t think that a single page visit is a bad thing. To me, it tells me the visitor found what they were looking for. Isn’t that what Google would want? If I were Google, I’d want a searcher to find the answer to their search on the exact page they clicked on in a search result…not 1 or 2 clicks in. If I were Google, I’d look more at ‘Who Bounces off that page, and returns to the same Google search, and clicks on someone else, and then never returns to your site,’ but I’m not Google, and that’s just my ‘if I were Google’ thoughts”.

“I think most agree that there’s a ‘Page Score’ or a ‘set of pages score,’ and when that has a bad score, it affects those pages, and somehow ripples up the site,” Boykin adds. “It could quite well be that if you have a page that links out to 100 internal pages, and if 80 of those pages are ‘low quality’ than it just might affect that page as well. A lot of this is hard to prove, but there are some smoking guns that can point in this direction.”



“Bounce rate is important, and yes, many sites that got hit did have a high bounce rate, but comparing this to sites/pages that weren’t hit doesn’t exactly show any ‘ah ha’ moments of ‘hey, if your bounce rate is over 75%, then you got Panda pooped on,’ because the bounce rate Google shows the public is missing many key metrics that they know, but don’t share with us.”

I think the best advice you can follow in relation to all of this is to simply find ways on how to further improve every page of your website and keep people from leaving your site, before they complete the task you want them to complete. That means providing content they want.



What do you think?

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