Oct 18 Google +1 = Fail

Written by Jason Van Midde. Posted in Search Engine Optimization

Google Plus One is a fail

Google recently launched a new service called Plus One or +1. It puts what is essentially a ripoff of the facebook “like” button next to search results. If you have a Google account and you are logged in then you will also see search results that your friends have given a “like”…I mean a “plus one” . So this Facebook ripoff will change your SERPs (search engine results pages) based on what your friends or just people who are in your address book give a plus one to. This is really stupid for a few reasons.

First off if you are doing a search for say a web marketing firm, why would you ever give a plus one to a site that you haven’t even seen? Then, if you click on a site like ours and you really like it are you really going to back to the SERP and give this site a plus one? I don’t think so. If anybody did this, the numbers are going to be so small that they’ll be negligible. Steven Hammer elaborates on this, talking about a lack of user motivation and the bad placement of the Plus One button.

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Secondly, I think that Google Plus One is really going to favor brands. People searching for tennis shoes are a lot more likely to give a plus one to Nike than they are to www.cheaptennisshoes.com. Why? Because Nike is a very well recognized brand and the searcher is a lot more likely to have had an experience with Nike apparel. So, when they see Nike.com on the SERP, they might give it a “plus one” just because they like the brand and not because they visited the site and had a good experience with it.

I also think that Google Plus One could be susceptible to fraud. Spammers could create tons of Google profiles on proxy servers and start having those robot accounts giving a “plus one” to their spammy sites, artificially boosting that sites rank in search. That is unless Google has some kind of means of detecting this kind of behavior and punishing people that are abusing the Plus One service. Christopher Rick talks about people getting their friends together and artificially boosting AdWords ads. I think at least for the immediate future people are going to figure out how to game Google Plus One and reap the rewards for doing so. In the long term it’s going to go the way of Buzz and fail.