This week, it was leaked that the Google +1 Button for websites would be made available today. While Google still seems to be sitting on the official announcement for the moment, we did run across a post about it on the company’s Inside AdWords blog in our feeds, which appears to have been removed (presumably it was accidentally posted too early).
Here’s what Google has to say on using the button:
Adding +1 buttons to your pages is a great way to help your ads stand out on Google. By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search ads and organic results might appear with +1 annotations more often. This could lead to more–and better qualified–traffic to your site.
To get started, visit the +1 button tool on Google Webmaster Central, where you’ll configure small snippets of JavaScript to add to the pages where you want +1 buttons to appear. You can pick from a few different button sizes and styles, so choose the +1 button that best matches your site’s layout.
When a user clicks +1, that +1 applies to the URL of the page they’re on. There are some easy ways to ensure your +1s apply as often as possible to the pages appearing in Google search results.
There is a Google Publisher Button Announce Group, which webmasters can subscribe to to stay up to date on the latest with the button.
The button is supported in 44 languages, but Google notes that +1 annotations only appear in English search results on Google.com for now.
Google named Best Buy, Add This, Mashable, The Huffington Post, Reuters, Bloomberg, and a few others as launch partners for the button. It will also appear on content in the Android Market, YouTube, Blogger, and Google Product Search. The company says you’ll start seeing the button on these properties in the coming days.
Update: Now Blogger has a post up about adding the button to your Blogger Blog. Software engineer Marcos Almeida writes:
To add the +1 button to your blog, you’ll need to enable Share buttons on Blogger. To do this, go to Design > Page Elements on your Blogger dashboard, find the Blog posts area, click on Edit, and select the “Show Share Buttons” option. If you are already using Share buttons, the +1 button will automatically show up as a new share option.
Update 2: Google has now made the post live on the Inside AdWords blog, and cross-posted it on the Official Google Blog, so you can read it in its entirety.
