Relatively speaking, Google’s +1 button is a new feature in search. However, it has already begun to affect searches in a big way. So much so, people have been trying to make, sadly, an unscrupulous business out of it.
Lately, sites have been springing up that offer to sell +1’s for your website. For a fee, you can get any where from 50 to several thousand unique clicks for the +1 button on your site — a practice which goes directly against Google’s quality guidelines. In the biz, its something we refer to as “black hat SEO.”
While tactics like this may be tempting, and can even provide some short term benefit, they can become detrimental or disastrous in the long run. In the case of buying +1’s for your site, there can be a number of ill-effects.
You may receive a penalization at a later date — Google prides itself on providing quality search results, and it doesn’t take kindly to those who try to game the system. If future algorithms can detect your purchased +1’s, you will have wasted your money and seriously harmed your website’s ranking in Google search.
It’s a spamming technique, and lowers quality — Consider what the +1 button is: a relevancy indicator to enhance social search. By paying a few hundred unrelated, non-relevant users to +1 your site, you can hurt your ranking in the long term and obscure your brand’s overall message to consumers.
It can mess up your analytics — The “audience report” in Google Analytics tells you the demographic and geographic information about users who’ve +1’d the pages on your site. It’s a great way to learn about your audience so you can cater to them better. Paying for a large amount of unnatural +1’s will skew this data and ruin your chances to find and target your actual, converting audience.
All of these negative aspects have the potential to harm your site. For long term success, you should always follow the best practices guidelines and stick to “white hat” SEO techniques.
Relatively speaking, Google’s +1 button is a new feature in search. However, it has already begun to affect searches in a big way. So much so, people have been trying to make, sadly, an unscrupulous business out of it.
Lately, sites have been springing up that offer to sell +1’s for your website. For a fee, you can get any where from 50 to several thousand unique clicks for the +1 button on your site – a practice which goes directly against Google’s quality guidelines. In the biz, its something we refer to as “back hat SEO.”
While tactics like this may be tempting, and can even provide some short term benefit, they can become detrimental or disastrous in the long run. In the case of buying +1’s for your site, there can be a number of ill-effects.
You may receive a penalization at a later date – Google prides itself on providing quality search results, and it doesn’t take kindly to those who try to game the system. If future algorithms can detect your purchased +1’s, you will have wasted your money and seriously harmed your website’s ranking in Google search.
It’s a spamming technique, and lowers quality – Consider what the +1 button is: a relevancy indicator to enhance social search. By paying a few hundred unrelated, non-relevant users to +1 your site, you can hurt your ranking in the long term and obscure your brand’s overall message to consumers.
It can mess up your analytics – The “audience report” in Google Analytics tells you the demographic and geographic information about users who’ve +1’d the pages on your site. It’s a great way to learn about your audience so you can cater to them better. Paying for a large amount of unnatural +1’s will skew this data and ruin your chances to find and target your actual, converting audience.
All of these negative aspects have the potential to harm your site. For long term success, you should always follow the best practices guidelines and stick to “white hat” SEO techniques.
The Google +1 Button was developed by Google as a way for people to recommend products, services, businesses, people, or anything else that may be found on a webpage that they might like. A website owner or business would add the button to their page or site and a visitor wishing to recommend the page or site to others would click the button when logged into their Google account. The network of that Google account user would then see that +1 when seeing the page or site come up in search or when visiting the page or site directly.
1. Search results (both paid and unpaid) can include the Google +1 Button.
2. The URL to be +1’d is identified in one of three ways (in the order that Google checks for the URL): href attribute, rel=”canonical” tag, browser displayed URL.
• The href attribute is in the code placed on your website.
• If for any reason, you copied the code and did not select a href attribute, Google will then check for any indication of your preferred canonical URL.
• If neither of the two above items is present, Google will use the URL as it is displayed in the address bar. This third method can cause errors due to variables being present in this form of link that would not be present in the canonical version.
3. The Google +1 Button is currently available in over 42 languages.
4. The Google +1 Button comes in 4 sizes (small, medium, standard, and tall) with the option of with or without count (the total number of clicks of the +1 button).
http://code.google.com/apis/+1button/#button-sizes
5. Google makes it easy to customize your preferred +1 Button code through their Create A Custom +1 Button page.
An example of the Google +1 Button, standard size without count, can be seen on MoreVisibility’s homepage:
https://www.morevisibility.com/
Contact us if you would like assistance with selecting and implementing social media buttons on your website.
975 South Federal Highway, 2nd Floor
Boca Raton, FL 33432
800.787.0497
ph: 561.620.9682
fx: 561.620.9684
info@morevisibility.com
