Google's +1

Google's +1

Google +1

Google revolutionized how searching is done on the Internet. There is a reason why it is a leading search engine in the world with over 60 percent of market share, according to various Internet resources. The next two leaders are Bing and Yahoo, occupying a little bit more than 10 percent of the market share each. It is important to note here that I introduced somewhat average numbers of what I saw in the search results on various sites in regards to search engines market share. Regardless of the source, Google is the leader on the search engine market, and it is a fact! What makes it a leader? Well, aside of the good quality of the search results, Google continues to innovate the way you search. Google's +1 is just that – a tool to increase the quality of the results returned to you when you search.

There is no doubt that the +1 button will be adopted by the website developers. It is a free opportunity to promote a website for no additional cost, beside the expense of adding a button to that website. As more and more of those buttons start floating around (as I begin to see), the more people will create or edit their Google profiles to take advantage of this +1 deal.

+1 is a ripoff of the Facebook's “Like” button. While wandering around the Internet, once in a while you come across a page that is interesting, but it is not that important to be added to your bookmarks. On the other hand, you would like to have a relatively quick access to it. Just hit +1 button! The page will be bookmarked under +1 tab on your Google's profile. You can always visit that page by scrolling through the pages that you +1'd by visiting your Google profile. The downside of this whole process, it is yet another online profile that you have to manage. On the bright side, your Google friends and you will benefit from better search results.

+1 button was designed to make the search results more relevant to you. Analyzing browsing history and your personal data stored on Google servers isn't enough to display a perfect search result. Google needs more information and some human factor to make the results more relevant to you and your search query. +1 button solves both of those problems. You provide Google with more information about what is really relevant to you by adding pages to your +1 block. And since you are doing it manually and not through some program-robot, you add “the human factor”, hence raising the quality of the displayed results for Google. At the end of the day, both YOU and Google are benefiting from this partnership. You provide Google with human-selected pages, while Google displays more relevant search results to you. It means you will find what you are looking for faster, and you are bound to come back for more Google experience.

It would be kind of boring if +1 was one-to-one-relationship kind of scheme. What if one of your friends found a website you'd like but neither she nor you know about it. +1 takes your friendship or whatever relationship you are in with your Google friends to the next level. Let's just assume that friends are sharing some common interest, despite it being a fact. Since the Internet is like our Universe – endless and ever expanding, one person cannot browse through all of the resources in his lifetime, but two people might. Then they can share the “approved” links between each other, while Google is the mediator of this whole business. Let's say you are into bikes. You have got a couple of friends that are into bikes. And some of them are your friends with you on your Google account, assuming all of you have Google profile enabled and personalized. One of your friend's comes across an awesome site devoted to mountain bikes and +1s it. The next day you are searching the web for information on mountain bikes for your vacation next month. The site that your friend +1'd will show up at the top of the search results, so you know your friend liked that page and since he is a hardcore mountain biker, you know you ought to check this page out, you do, and, alas, you've found exactly what you were looking for. Neat, isn't it?!

In short, +1 button will help you find what you are looking for faster, since some of your friends had already found it. This button will also help Google to fine tune its analytics, which will improve the quality of ads delivered to you, meaning higher revenues for Google. This is somewhat a win-win situation. And even though, you do a lot of work for Google, but Google takes all the cash, it might be still worth it. On the other hand, you get to use their services for free, and those services are outstanding: free search engine, free e-mail, free sync-able calendar, free news, free storage, and many other innovative services. More interesting projects are on their way, including revamped social network experience with Google+ and Google Wallet for making easy and fast payments. Sadly, there are no similar innovation from the next two top search engines, Yahoo and Microsoft. With no answer from those two giants, one can expect the Google's market share only to increase, which will suck for Yahoo and Microsoft.