When Google introduced the +1 button, a lot of webmasters raced to add it to their websites.  The logic seems that if Google offers the button, then adding it to your website must help your rankings, right?

While it’s impossible to know for sure, here at Cement Marketing we expect that it won’t help move your website up in the rankings, but it may help you get more traffic anyways.  How can this be?

First, lets talk about why it most likely doesn’t help move your website up the rankings…

Why Doesn’t Google’s +1 Button Improve My Rankings?

Google uses hundreds of signals (or variables) to determine the relevance and quality of your website.  Google continually tests the value of different signals.  Some signals Google looks for that you may be familiar with already are…

  • Number and Quality of Inbound Links
  • Age of your domain
  • Keywords on your page
Most signals don’t turn out to be very useful.  For instance, I’m sure that google is working hard to figure out how to factor twitter’s results into their rankings, but early attempts gave really bad results.  It is just too easy for spammers to manipulate twitter.

 

Other signals have turned out to be unsavory too.  Meta Keywords used to be a strong signal but they were easily spammed (and therefor irrelevant) and now Google doesn’t even factor meta-keywords into their Algorithm.  This sort of devaluing happens all the time as the state of the internet changes what signals show the true worth of a website.

 

Currently, the +1 signal is unsavory too.  The reason for this is that so few websites have the +1 added to their site.  It just wouldn’t be good for search results if Google started ranking websites with the +1 higher than sites without it.  The addition of a +1 button doesn’t mean the website is any better quality, it just means the webmaster is more active.  It would be silly for Google to phase out older sites with higher quality content just to make room for worse websites that added the +1 button.

Should I Add the +1 Button Anyways?

We recommend you do.  And here’s why:

See the +1?
See the +1?
Do you see the +1 in the result?  Hint: It’s the little face under the Raven Tools result.
The face shown is a google contact of mine.  And if your users see a face it will be a google contact of theirs.  What could be a better way to draw people into your website than pictures of their friend and family beckoning them in?
The simple truth is: Even if your website shows up 5th in the results, it has a much better chance of getting a click with some pearly whites.

What About the Spammers?

After the announcement of +1’s, it was only days before you could pay someone to have thousands of fake accounts +1 your website.  (This is yet another reason why the +1 button makes for a bad search ranking signal).  But when you consider the value that +1’s truly offer, then having thousands of fake accounts +1ing your site won’t help at all.  Why?

Fake accounts won’t have many friends or contacts.  So no one will ever see the fake accounts pearly whites when they search.  Simple.

Convinced you want to add the +1 Button?  See how on the +1 Button Page or let us do it for you!