Google Inc. has today taken the wraps off yet another enhancement to its increasingly diverse services, the +1 button. At its core the +1 button is the same as a Facebook “Like” button, although it can be deployed anywhere on the Web, most importantly in search results. When fully deployed (it’s rolling out slowly from today), users will be able to press the +1 button next to something they like to recommend it to their friends. At first the recommendations will only apply to people connected to you through your Google account (your GMail contacts, GChat buddies, etc.), but this will eventually expand to include your Twitter contacts too.
Although not as overt as Facebook’s Like button – contacts will not see an alert that you have +1’ed something – the endorsement will be used as part of Google’s social signals search metric, meaning the item will rank higher in your contact’s searches.
Although Google has launched the feature in its typically downplayed manor – just a blog post and a video – the implications could be huge. Unlike Facebook’s now-ubiquitous “Like” button, which just shares the content with your Facebook friends or subscribes you to a page’s feed, the +1 button could actually be used to influence overall search rankings.
Google haven’t made it clear if they’re using +1s as a global search signal yet, however the +1 pop-up does include a tick-box that asks  to “Use [your] information to personalize content and ads across the Web.” This could mean sites that have poor rankings in Google, but great content, could be lifted up the search results by people “+1ing” their content.
The +1 button seems to have a fair amount of overlap with Google’s Buzz service, so it will be interesting to see if the two systems merge over time.
Google is just rolling out the button to search results and display ads to begin with, but will soon allow it to be embedded in sites in the same way Facebook’s “Like” and Twitter’s “Tweet” button are, on  just about any other content you care to imagine.
The new function will be rolled out to English users on Google.com first, and you can use it right now by activating it in Google Labs and performing a search on Google.com (Pro tip – if you are automatically redirected to your country’s Google page use Google.com/ncr instead).
