Discovering What +1 Is All About

The great thing about having a +1 button rather than a Like button is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that you approve the post (although most of the time that’s what it implies). I’ve seen people post the death of a loved one on Facebook, and other people click Like, which is a rather odd way of passing on condolences.

But +1 is more generic, and it adds your name to the group of people who want to associate themselves with a post or web page. It isn’t, however, another form of the Share icon. You still need to share content for it to appear in your Stream.

Google has integrated +1 with many of its services, such as Google Search, YouTube, and Google Reader. And people can add the +1 icon to their websites, which enables users to like and share web pages with Google+ directly from a website (as shown in Figure 10-1).

Content that you have +1’d can appear on your profile, although it’s not publicly available by default. Later in the chapter I show you how to increase the visibility of your +1 content so other people can easily see your interests. It’s also a great way of keeping track of things you like, and you can always check up on them later (I use it as a form of long-term bookmarking for pages I’ve found interesting).

Finally, when you use +1, you’re helping the websites you like get better results from Google Search. Every time you +1 a page, Google takes that into account in its search results, and when you use Google Search you’ll find that people in your Circles who liked particular websites appear next to the search results.