With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social — As Do Google Ads | Hacker News Reader

With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social — As Do Google Ads

techcrunch.com

170 pointssusanhi107 comments

It's an interesting way of arranging a link aggregator, in that the links are already present. That said, I don't see this taking off. People compartmentalize their life based on functionality. Some will see google only as a search tool, digg/reddit/hn/slashdot/etc as their social news site, gmail/hotmail/etc as their mailing client - and wont use those products for anything other than their mentally compartmentalized purpose.

The other issue that I see here is the culture that is present. Think of everyone that uses google - do you want all of their votes to influence the content that you see? I don't want to see the eggplant tofurduken recipe that Aunt Millie +1'd. Sure, you can limit the influence to just your circle of friends, but that doesn't bring much new to the table. Reddit has done well because it allows for this context of culture to be one of it's primary features (via subreddits). Even HN has this driving niche focus sitewide.

All that said, while I dont expect this to take off, I do expect to see a "+1 THIS!" button next to the "tweet this!"/"digg this!"/"reddit this!" button on every blogspam post out there.

If this will be the final product of "+1", I'd agree with you that it probably won't take off.

Google, however, has been taking it methodically slow on social (and geo-location too). This is probably just a small piece of what they envision it to be. This is in contrast to the big, complicated launch of Google Wave.

I'm holding my judgement for now. I'm excited to see what Google comes up with next.

Perhaps a better comparison would be Buzz. That was a big change, rolled out to everyone at once, and an attempt at grabbing a chunk of the social web in one swoop.

Meanwhile, their repeated, incremental, segmented, non-intrusive changes to add social aspects to their searching have essentially all gone off without a hitch.

The first time I saw Buzz, I thought "Really? Good luck with that.". Prior to the privacy hubbub (I actually read the dialog), which nigh-totally tanked it. The first time I saw a tweet from a friend come up in a relevant search result, I thought "Really? Awesome." and I clicked on the link. I think this'll end up working better than their much-ignored stars on results.

Yeah, people are underestimating (and have been for a while) how useful social search is, and +1 is really just an extension of that. Although that may be because you need a Google Profile and have it linked to all your profiles to get the most use out of it.

Google had what people had been linking to on Twitter, but they didn't have what they had "liked" on Facebook. Now they have an answer to that too.

> I don't want to see the eggplant tofurduken recipe that Aunt Millie +1'd.

I agree with you mostly, but I think you're slightly missing the point in this bit. Suppose you had searched for "eggplant tofurduken recipe" and the result that Aunt Millie +1'd happened to be shown - would you appreciate knowing that she had looked at the same page and approved it? I know I would.

I think people are reading a bit too much into this as if it's now going to have a huge influence on Google's search results, taking precedence over the actual search terms. I think it's actually going to be far more incremental than that.

would you appreciate knowing that she had looked at the same page and approved it? I know I would

Why? For a topic like that, I'd trust Google's general algorithm better than any friend or relative.

And even if recommendations can improve the results, why would the recommendations of my friends be any better than those of strangers? There are a few things like music where I might care what a few particular friends think, but I wouldn't be using Google to discover things like that anyway. The only time I want to see links from my friends is when I'm taking a break and not looking for anything in particular.

If Google actually wants to become a discovery/recommendation engine, it's going to be orthogonal to search. They will have to train people to use Google in a new way -- the way they currently use Facebook. This idea that goal-seeking and passive entertainment can be merged into a single activity seems really unnatural to me.

Why? For a topic like that, I'd trust Google's general algorithm better than any friend or relative.

Google has an algorithm that effectively ranks the quality of recipes?! Neat!

If more people link to the better recipes, then yes. If not, recommendations might help but again, why is my aunt's choice more accurate than a stranger's?

Carrying on with the recipe example, there are dozens of ways to cook most recipes, which do you choose? How the variations differ may not be immediately obvious, however if you have extra information, such as your aunt's recommendation then the choice may become easier (your aunt shares your taste in cakes for example).

Social recommendation is useful when there are lots of right answers.

I'm supposed to like the same food as my friends and relatives? That's absurd. My father loves olives, I hate them. My brother hates spicy food, I love it. My mother hates cheese and milk, I like them just fine. My extended family is all meat and potatos, I'll eat food from anywhere in the world.

The things that connect me to these people just has nothing whatsoever to do with the things that I search for. I'm having a hard time thinking of any topic on which my friends and relatives can make better recommendations than the entire internet just by virtue of knowing me. The only time I would want to constrain a search to my social network is when I'm researching my social network itself.

I'm not surprised that people like the idea of social search. It sounds pleasant enough. But I have yet to see any useful example of it, or even hear a hypothetical one.

You're getting a little personal with the recipe example, I am sure there are people out there who like to cook and have family members who like to cook the same things. Crazy I know.

I suppose you could have no shared interests and opinions with anyone you know. Then I am afraid social recommendation, whether it is verbal or as part of a Google search, isn't for you.

I shall say it again for you, there are many questions where there are no wrong answers for which adding a social context will be a benefit, especially if you are someone who is in contact with people who have opinions you care about.

To a large extent tastes are regional and based on cultural background. Particularly in the case of acquired tastes such as for spicy or astringent food, there's a clear in-group/out-group bimodal distribution of preference.

Obviously individual variations exist, but the opinions of your friends and family are far from being irrelevant data.

I frankly agree.. except that I think this might be a bit of geek-goggles. I think most of the people I know would love social proof from their immediate circle...

But yeah. Not me, man. The internets are my friends.

Why do you think google offers free food to its employees?

I agree 1000% that people compartmentalize based on functionality, which is why Google shouldn't be afraid of Facebook on search (that and Facebook not having search and search being difficult).

What if I'm facebook and I'm processing >500M "likes" a day?

Could I create a reasonable search engine only using URLs people have "liked" and weight search results based on number of likes and whether people in my friends list have liked it?

That'll work great if you're searching for the latest hamster-on-a-piano video. It might not work quite so well if you're searching for something with substance. Despite the hype, most people aren't especially good at uncovering original content.

A totaly agree, people don't usualy share much stufs on facebook? Have you seens around a link to a Hadoop tutorial in your news feed yet?

I think that sharing that sort of thing will be in a more targeted way, via e.g. yourpane.com. I never share links that don't appeal to everyone on Twitter or Facebook, but I send things to specific friends all the time.

You could, but I doubt many would use it. I agree with the above, that people compartmentalize, and they see Facebook as a place to see pictures of their friends and play games. They see Google as place to look up information.

There already is a very good search on Facebook and the fact that it is powered by Bing is unknown and irrelevant to 95% of the people. However it hasn't made a dent in search, so you have to seriously ask why that is. If you believe in Facebook as a search engine (I don't), the only real answer is because it's not powered by Likes. But to believe that, you have to believe that people have a major affinity for Likes, enough to throw away their old search habits in favor of it.

I would see the fact that the walled Facebook encompasses more and more of previously searchable content as a bigger threat to Google search. Facebook that cannot be scraped for content competes for the pageviews share with the independent searchable sites, so there's less left for Google to search.

In addition to that, clicking on the "+1" button yields a "Use my information to personalize content and ads across the web." checkbox. Not sexy.

> All that said, while I dont expect this to take off, I do expect to see a "+1 THIS!" button next to the "tweet this!"/"digg this!"/"reddit this!" button on every blogspam post out there.

Agreeing with you here, not to mention I would typically +1 something after clicking on the link and reading it. This current UX has me either knowing something is worthy of a +1 before reading it or reading it, pressing the back button, then clicking the +1. A +1 THIS next to tweet/digg/like makes sense.

Beautifully said, especially about Aunt Millie. Limiting the influence to your contacts should be the default setting. If some people are more adventurous, then they can jump in.

Someone should make a +1 function with a GRE question as a captcha.

A web for the rest of us!

The obvious: I'm sure it won't be long before Google creates an embeddable +1 button, for you to include in your site/blog/webapp. Because right now I don't see why I would run a search, click the result, go 'whoah, good article' and then hit back to the results page to '+1' aforementioned article.

What I really like about this, though, is that it sounds so good.

"I'd +1 that."

"Have you +1ed?"

"Where's the essay? Uh, it's in my +1s"

I don't see anything that would keep them from moving this to the gtoolbar, Chrome or a javascriptlet.

I agree with the branding of it. I doubt I will use it much, but it is catchy.

There is something very Google about the branding. It's a little bit nerdy, very simple, and cool. I like it a lot more than "Like".

"It's a little bit nerdy," is exactly the problem I see with this. They are taking a piece of internet/geek culture and expanding it to my Grandma. My Grandma know what it means to "Like" something, but does she understand "+1"? Probably not.

Did people know what a "googol" was? It doesn't really matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

Well to be fair, Andrex, people still don't know what a 'googol' is. They know 'Google', and what 'Google' means to them is very different from 'googol'.

And they could add a +1 button to Chrome.

do you really find "have you plus-oned it?" catchy? or are you just being sarcastic? (I'd go the sarcastic route, imho it sounds terrible)

Who ever talks these days? By "sounds good" don't we actually mean "looks look typed on my keyboard"? +1 me if you like this ;-)

I kinda "talk" to myself in my mind, when I read...

I see hundreds of thousands of billable hours of mechanical turk and dungeon grade Indian and Chinese IT Services time spent +1ing SEO spam farm links.

As PageRank is a trust metric, and their entire system is based around that, I'd imagine they would perform similar calculations for +1 results. Especially as +1s contain no implicit content, as they are merely flags, I find it unlikely to suffer from SEO like search does - trust metrics are practically designed to handle farming.

How can you calculate a trust rank of +1s? Remember that people don't +1 other people, and don't know who +1ed what, so not even people can assess who does quality voting.

Google's aiming for the social game, and has been hosting, indexing, and correlating it for a long time. They have blogger, buzz, gmail, people's names, credit cards, links to and searching of your twitter account, your blog, your friends, your x, your y, even your z. Why can't they infer popularity that way, identically to how PageRank works?

And people do see who +1d something, it requires a public account - it's visible on the link (as displayed in the video, and implied by the same behavior with tweeted links) and on your profile page.

If a nobody from nowhere +1s a link, their friends will see it, but it's unlikely to affect the world at-large. Similarly, trust-metric wise, if a cluster of nobodies +1s a thousand pages, the impact will be restricted to their cluster. If an extremely-highly-connected person, who many people follow on Twitter / Reader / etc, +1s something, it'll have more impact simply by being visible to more people and because their "importance" can be inferred by those connections.

Agree, though reputation rank may mitigate some of this behavior when implemented. The urls +1 profile distribution may end up looking like a typical back link profile and something most SEOs should try and balance.

Google actually played around with a voting feature awhile back. When you searched for a term, there was an up arrow on the results, so it moved those results to the top every time you searched for those terms. This was incredible useful for me, because for example I was too lazy to bookmark api documentation and just search for example rails api, and the links I voted up were automatically at the top. If this works like this I will be happy, the social aspect I don't care for, but can see how it will be relevant if enough people are voting for good content.. thats associated with specific search terms.

Possible unintuitive user experience?

Google's usage comes from leaving Google's site as fast as possible (search for a term, then leave Google to visit the result).

This looks like you would do a search, visit the resulting site, and then remember to go back to the Google results page to click the +1.

If the website you are visiting also integrates +1, then there is no need to go back and +1.

But yeah, going back to the Google search results page is a pain and I doubt very many people would actually take that action, unless they are really impressed by the site and are familiar with the +1 feature.

4chan already regularly troll google search results by mass-searching for a specific, disturbing sentence. This seems like another tool in their arsenal.

Not saying Google should let bullies dictate their behaviour, but this _could_ be abused.

I bet the SEO underworld is also going bananas with the potential to game the system.

> I bet the SEO underworld is also going bananas with the potential to game the system.

The value to the SEO underworld depends on how Google interprets the +1.

Google can use +1 data to identify folks trying to game the system.

The easiest way to get around said identification, or rather, to keep Google from using your +1 to hose you, is to provide good data.

Since Google wants good data .....

If none of the 4chan users are my friends, I won't see anything from them. I think this is actually not a problem.

The TechCrunch article hinted at this feature being rolled out to everyone performing a search on Google, so this sort of thing may very well affect us all.

I imagine Google will manage some sort of defense, though. This feature could kill their product otherwise.

'+1' proves that Google is run by engineers.

I, for one, prefer it to 'Like' or 'Tweet'.

It can have a nerdy connotation, but +1 is pretty well known. The average person probably sees it in the party invite/club culture context where you vouch for one person, much like you'll be vouching for sites.

Probably not better than Like, but definitely not worse than Tweet.

Edit: And the ultimate arbitrator of slang agrees: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=plus%20one

I don't agree with Like. It's good for socializing, but not for this.

I've never heard anybody say they 'like' an article from Wikipedia, but they might find it interesting, so they'd +1 it.

Yes, +1 has the connotation of "noteworthy" rather than "fan".

So it is more generally useful. One could +1 a news article about an earthquake or horrific disaster, but might be reluctant to Like it.

To me, it's much closer to communicating agreement in Apache open source projects. Someone proposes an idea or expresses an opinion, others simply respond with "+1" instead of a variety of ways of saying "Yes/agreed/I concur/indeed/I second/I support/Let's do it" etc.

So I got the same thought that pathik did - the +1 feeds my personal image of Google as primarily run by engineers.

But the context of this is much more akin to forums than parties. I'll +1 a link I agree with or found useful, but I'm not going to bring the link to a night club.

I'll agree that 'Like' is more natural than +1, but 'Tweet'?!?

Not only does 'Tweet' not have the natural connotation of 'Like' or '+1', but it sounds positively dorky to say.

But of course 'Tweeting' is incredibly popular, which I guess just goes to show that sometimes it's better to use a weird word that initially sounds like nonsense. :-)

I bet the original design as '++'.

Maybe ++ would be engineer-ish, but I think that "+1" gives a better connotation of contributing to a greater social whole rather than seeming like just another bookmarked page.

I'd rather see a "-1"; so when I go back to the results because the result didn't match my need, I could indicate it (w/o a full ban). I'm not likely to ever return for a +1 result, since, almost by definition, I'm done searching at that point.

There's not a "-1 button" but you can block search results in a couple ways:

- Install the Personal Blocklist extension in Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbd...

- Click on a search result, then click back, and you'll see a "block example.com" for that snippet.

The first option is easy and always shows block links; the second option is server-side, so the blocks work on different browsers.

I love the "block" functionality, but it is really a different feature. Block says "this site is spam, don't show it to me anymore." "-1" says "this result isn't relevant to what I'm searching for, alter the future results accordingly."

Regardless, I love what Google is doing here in taking individual consideration into account.

This is good interpretation of the functionality is meant to be used.

However, we have seen several cases where the usage of the functionality slowly drives how the feature is morphed and I am guessing Google is experimenting with the button initially to see how the users like it and would try to weave other functionalities around it.

Maybe I'm missing something, but what benefit do I get as a user out of +1-ing something?

Bookmark-ish functionality I guess?

Maybe you could pretend it's a microtransaction gift to the receiver, which it probably is in some vague way.

I have a strong suspicion that `+1`s you give out would affect your search results at least as much as would those of your friends.

I got a few downvotes last week saying google needed exactly this to fend off Facebook constructing a search engine based on it's like button data.

This goes a long way but the problem I see here is that I want to be able to +1 on the page itself, not have to click back to the search results, find the result again, and then press +1.

"So they’re taking it slow. There will be no +1 buttons for publishers at launch (but they’re coming)."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyUNI3_V2c#t=0m45s

"And soon you'll be able to +1 more than just search results. You'll also find the +1 button on sites across the web, making it easy to +1 pages after you visited them."

But isn't this the classic problem regarding the dinosaur and the egg ?!

I would have made sure that those embeddable buttons (some basic rudimentary version) are out along with the roll out. Because, I know literally no-one who goes back to the search results page for anything !

Right! If the page is good, actually what you are looking for, are you going to back out and tell google? I doubt it.

WSJ's coverage, "Google Seeks Answer to Facebook With 'Social Search'", is here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870380630457623...

Search Engine Land does a good job of relating this announcement to prior Google social projects and rumors: http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-fac...

You can join Google's +1 experiment here: http://www.google.com/experimental/

http://www.google.com/experimental/

I wish they would add a -1 button

they do: "block all example.com results" or whatever. it's just not shared (yet?)

Serious question: why would you want to share it? I think the default for most websites is already that no one goes there. Telling someone "This exists but don't go there" is like the canonical, "Don't think of a polar bear."

On the other hand, telling Google "you know this exists but it's useless" is a useful bit of information. It's not like your blocked websites would be shared in a list, they would just be used to influence the ordering of search results.

Yes, but this goes back to magicalist's comment above.

well that's more of a middle finger for a domain or subdomain as opposed to a thumbs down for a single result for a specific search (which is how I envision a -1)

If I could see this -1 layer and +1 layer in social searches I could pick out visually what the more likely to have solid content links would be. Or the safer-neighborhoods if you will.

I always thought a few recommendations or disses by people in my social network weighed as heavily as a couple hundred recommendations in aggregate of total strangers (like yelp).

Anyone else having flashbacks to Yahoo in 1996:

http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo....

And then in 2006:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060101035628/http://www.yahoo.c...

? Google has featuritis.

They do seem to be adding a little too much to the search engine itself. I just noticed that they've finally hidden "realtime results" behind a link you have to click, instead of shoving random idiotic Twitter crap in your face when you search for current topics.

There's an idea that had some potential, but seems to have made no progress since its debut. It's still no better than a simple Twitter search.

Google seems a little too eager to adopt random crazy ideas (SearchWiki) and a little too willing to kill off good ideas that don't take off quickly enough (Wave). I can't think of a recent new feature or product that was a big success, which is disappointing.

I thought Wave was a good idea, and a good amount of my friends used it for a while. I think integrating it more with gmail would have made it dynamite. Or some how using it as a regular email account. I kinda miss wave now.

> I can't think of a recent new feature or product that was a big success, which is disappointing.

Google Chrome?

This seems like a defensive move on Google's part. I imagine there are talks inside Facebook to either develop their own search or work with another search provider to integrate Facebook into the results. I am not sure how widely this feature will be used but, in my opinion, it is definitely the right move.

I don't find this very useful. My friends often like things that I don't like. They're not my friends because they like the bands or movies or web sites that I do. Recommendations from my friends carry no more weight than they would from anyone else.

The only difference between a friend and a stranger is that I might engage a friend in a conversation with specific questions about something they've used or seen that I haven't, but the value of that conversation comes from the detail of the exchange and targeted or objective questions I'd ask, it's not expressible as a boolean like/+1 or a 1-10 rating.

Announcement on the official Google blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/1s-right-recommendati...

Oh look, Google's very own "like" button.

Lets see how well they do with it.

This might sound dumb, but it's not really obvious how I add people I know to my google profile as a "friend". With facebook, it's dead simple and it makes sense why you would do that.

I assume I have to connect an account here: https://profiles.google.com/connectedaccounts

But then don't my friends have to do that as well? I don't really see why they would.

The searchengineland article explains it: http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-fac... As far as I understand, things from connected accounts is the social connection. The friends are your buzz friends (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong).

To jumpstart user identities in googles take on social google could buy communities like github, photo.net and import user identities from there. Of course the privacy and the UX of such a move will dictate whether users go "wow this is great" or "oh my god now the whole internet knows about my tinfoil hat". In the meanwhile they could try to integrate identities from services that google already owns - youtube, picasa, google reader etc.

I see this as potentially being very useful.

Imagine if you had the ability to Google search all of your friend's 'Likes' on Facebook. This is what Google is trying to create here, except for webpages instead of social snippets.

This suggests a parallel competing feature for Facebook: Make all of your friend's 'Likes' searchable through the search toolbar on Facebook.

A thought: Liking (or +1-ing) at the URL level seems useful but too coarse-grained as a general model. Maybe I've made too many Git checkins today, but I'd like to be able to select some text and +1 it. That's what I use Twitter or my blog for at least half the time: to point out an interesting sentence or two. You, know, the money quotes.

Can I opt-out of the social part but still allow my results to be used anonymously in their ranking algorithm?

It would have been so cool if I could have redirected ads to a particular friend. E.g, I know he's looking for a camera, and I see this great deal when looking up some reviews for him.

+1 -> Bob's a happy monkey !

I don't see mainstream users regularly +1'ing (or plus'ing???) search results. Feels awkward and forced to me.

Hopefully this is just a very small part of their larger plan.

Puts an interesting spin on SEO. It seems the best technique is still to simply produce quality content that people want to link to and share with their friends.

The oddest thing to me is having it on the search results page. I understand that's where they hand off control, but on the other hand won't most people have to click through the links in question to figure out if they like the content? I generally only go back to the search results if I didn't like the results and want to check out sites lower down.

I hope, along with fixing everything else about Google Bookmarks, they add a feature to automatically +1 all of your bookmarks.

I like it. Seems unintrusive and simple, but useful en-masse.

(-1 the mouseover animated highlight glossy thing though.)

edit: Heh, and the url? http://google.com/+1button

Confusing broken URL cracking code everywhere. ;)

Isn't a search result assessed on its relevance to the search terms? I don't see that a site recommendation does an awful lot to help me know if it has what I'm looking for.

This is brilliant - and outdated. Do all Google engineers play RPG's? +60 credibility to my twitter feed!

The first one who publishes something, so we can integrate the +1-button on our websites, get's a +1! ;)

Is this going to be a new way for people to game search results? I personally wont be using it

Some of the websites I use are a competitive business advantage. Others are private topics of personal interest.

I love Google but I hated Buzz and I think I will hate social search too.

I don't understand the icon. What's it supposed to be? A file folder with colored tabs?

They could have gone 1+ and made the lisp folks happy.

i wonder if this will promote junk content. if paris hilton starts popping up over paris france when you search paris there might be a big issue here.

also longer and richer content might get pushed aside by shorter gawker style content. wikipedia should be ok though... =)

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