A few months ago Google announced they would be joining the likes of Twitter and Facebook by launching their own sharing button, called Google +1 which would be available to sites across the web. Yesterday the Google Stork finally delivered the new arrival to eager webmasters and site owners, and the infant +1 button is already popping up all over the place.

Following the unprecedented impact of Facebook’s ‘Like’ button it was only a matter of time before Google upped the anti with a new social sharing idea, and they did, early last year with Google Buzz. Buzz is a social media product which allows Gmail users to post updates, comment on posts of people they know and share content with friends. Way before that there was Orkut (who?) in 2004, then Wave in 2009 which was dropped after a year because nobody used it, followed by Buzz which was marred by privacy flaws and inadequate testing a week after launching, and has never really gained much traction.

So Why is the +1 Feature Different?

The +1 button seems to have been designed with Facebook’s ‘Like’ button very much in mind. You need a Google profile of course, and what you choose to +1 is a public affair. As with Facebook, again, the number of +1′s the content has is displayed, your +1 will count as part of that number. If someone you know who is part of your Google contacts views that content, your name may appear next to it too. You can choose to hide your +1′s in your profile tab the same way you would, for example, hide photos.

Google have tried and flopped a few times now in social media. It may be that the addition of +1 to the family is the death knell for Buzz, but I don’t think anyone will notice. When it comes to SEO no other players come close to Google, and the addition of the +1 button to your site is highly likely to increase traffic, and more importantly increase qualified traffic. Let’s face it, if you’re looking for a popcorn maker and your search returns a popcorn maker site that your friend has +1′d, you’ll quite likely take a look at that site. It should also help assist buying decisions and weed out unscrupulous sellers by giving users a snapshot of how well ‘liked’, or ‘+1′d’ if you will, their product is.

The +1 button can be placed on any page using a short snippet of code, and webmasters can use the Google code generator to customise the button.