Google +1 is similar to the Facebook like button, it allows you to “+1” a site you like or would like to recommend and then friends/contacts on your Google account will see that you have +1’d it.

It looks like this :

What makes it slightly more useful than the Facebook like button is the +1 also shows up on search results when searching on Google. For example if a friend has +1’d play.com’s DVD section, when searching for “Buy DVDs” you would see that this friend had +1’d against play.com on the search results. You are therefore more likely to visit the site based on this friends recommendation. The main benefit to this feature is it quickly allows you to see recommend sites without actually having to visit the site.

There’s more…

It seems Google +1 is only a small part of this new project, the whole project is simply named “Google +” which is set to be a new social networking platform which will turn their search engine into a massive social network.

Similar to Facebook you have friends and contacts however you can group theses people into Circles so you only share details with certain groups. This could be useful if you were friends with your boss online – you could place them in a separate group to your close friends to avoid your boss seeing pictures of you passed out with kebab down your shirt…or worse!

Another feature of Google + is Hangouts, this looks to challenge Facebook/Skype video chat, offering a flexible online video meeting area. Whether it’s a social gathering of used for business you can have up to 10 people at once on the video chat. We’ve added Google’s promotional video below for a taster and I’m sure they’ll have more information on this very soon.

All these features are bound to bring potential benefits to websites and businesses so its worth checking out. One thing to do now is to get Google +1 on your site so your visitors can start +1ing you. You can visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/ for information on integrating Google +1 onto your website, it’s pretty easy to do.