THUNDER BAY – Google has begun to allow integration of its +1 button into third-party social media platforms. PowerReviews will be among the first social commerce platforms, along with BazaarVoice, to integrate the button. Jockey is one of the first brands to tap the combined social recommendation engine.
The Google and PowerReviews partnership allows consumers to make one-click recommendations to friends and contacts without leaving the product page. It also takes a direct swipe at Facebook’s Like feature.
Google’s +1 button, which is very similar to the Facebook “Like” button, becomes available to PowerReviews customers as part of the ratings and review product supporting the brand, using social recommendations to drive business.
When someone hits the +1 button, it serves up below the listing in the search engine query results. While reviews are not made visible in the results, consumers can see the amount of +1s, explains Nadim Hossain, vice president of marketing at PowerReviews, a social commerce network that organizes and catalogs more than 35 million products and 5,500 branded products.
About three-quarters of the time consumers are online is spent research products, and the No. 1 source of information is customer reviews, according to the PowerReviews 2011 Social Shopping study released in June.
Data shows that when someone shares a review on their Facebook feed, 70% of the time it results in another Like or comment. Each Like or comment, on average, generates about $15.72 in sales.
Google metrics reveal that in July, the Google +1 button crossed 2 billion daily views. Today, the +1 button appears on more than 1 million sites, with more than 4 billion daily views.
Aside from allowing third-party integration, Google made other enhancements. The +1 button now allows Web site visitors to share links to pages on Google+. Marketers can use +Snippets to customize the name, image and description that appear when visitors share content, opening the site to a new source of online traffic. And new inline annotations help increase engagement after users see a friend’s recommendation on your page.
For instance, those running a movie review site might want visitors to share posts containing the title, movie poster and a brief synopsis. For marketers that don’t use the rich snippets mark-up to build annotations for pages on Google search, adding the correct schema.org contributes to the data present on the pages. They can set a name, image and description in the code.
The easiest way to include a +1 button on a Web site page is to add JavaScript and +1 button tag. Google walks through adding the button, configuration techniques, and populating +Snippets.
Laurie Sullivan
(c) 2011 MediaPost Communications Google +1 Integration Takes Bite Out Of Facebook Likes by Laurie Sullivan originally appeared in Online Media Daily on August 26, 2011.
If you would like a Google+ Invite, email newsroom@netnewsledger.com Limited to the first 100 requests.
