Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-07-22 07:05:26 - Graham Ellis
Do you like my pages? If you do, you may choose to write to me to tell me that you do (for the people who go to that trouble, we really appreciate the input), a huge THANK YOU - especially if you tell me why you like the page. Because that helps me make our pages even more relevant and likeable.
Facebook offers a "likes" button where - much more easily - known users can come along and approve a posting; John posts up a picture of himself in a Santa outfit, and Jane clicks on the like button to indicate that she enjoyed seeing the picture, and approves of it.
Google now offers a facility that has parallels - where people with Google accounts can select a "+1" button on a web page to indicate their approval of that page. The page provider must choose to put the button on his page (and choose where it goes), and then visitors who are registered with Google (this should avoid spam approvals!) are free to pass a compliement on the page. The facility is potentially very valuable to the site owner as it can give a visible count of approvals - a recommendation to others that this is good material - in a page, and they're providing a fresh feed of data for Google's search algorithms, real human entered data from many independent sources that will help in future page ranking.
I've put a short demonstration page together - [here] - which shows the code you need to add to your page to add the Google +1 button and system. The source is as follows (web site copy you may cut and paste [here]):
<html>
<head>
<title>Demonstration of Google +1 button</title>
<!-- Place this tag in your head or just before your close body tag -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js">
{lang: 'en-GB'}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Google +1 Demonstration</h1>
If you "like" a page - want to recommend it - you do so through Google's +1 system.
<br />
Here's a google +1 button that you can press to say you like the page:
<br />
<g:plusone></g:plusone>
</body>
</html>
And I've also added (as something of a toe in the water) +1 buttons onto our Blog archive pages; I'm planning that more will come, quite rapidly, as I iron out any little issues during testing.