Lets try and forget Google Buzz for a second and look at Google’s latest attempt at injecting social activity into search results. As posted earlier today on the Google Blog, you’re going to start seeing a new button next to organic search results, ads and blog content. Eventually you’ll be able to see the button right next to the Facebook “Like” button on your favorite site’s article page.
I think it goes without saying, but Google’s intent for this is to get even more user data from you to further control the inter-webs and make things a little bit easier for users to find content that is worth their while. Actually, this is a pretty intuitive piece of functionality that may be a bit of a “well duh” for many; but it’s smart, very smart. Google doesn’t like being forced into anything but when Bing and Facebook started to pal around, they had no choice but to come up with something that would create a similar connection to friend activity. Back in February Google started showing shared content within the social sphere; now this takes it one step further. Perhaps there is content you haven’t shared but still like. You can “+1″ it and still let your peeps know it’s worth checking out without taking the excruciatingly long 1.5 seconds to share it. Just think of all the time you can save!
I can see good uses for the “+1″ though, aside from showing my friends something worth checking out. When you “+1″ something it gets saved in your Google profile. That means you could use it as a bookmarking tool for great content on the web so you can go back and check it out later.
What about you? What do you think about the “+1″ that Google just brought to your social party?
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