As a prelude to its social network, Google released a social sharing button known as Google +1. Available to webmasters as a widget or to searchers on the SERP itself, the Google +1 button seems in many ways to be a response to the Facebook “Like” button and its impact on Bing search. But how is Google +1 faring?
According to a study from BrightEdge, pretty well. The BrightEdge study examined the presence or absence of social widgets and links on the top 10,000 sites on the web. Google +1 sees an adoption on the home page of 4.5 percent, up from 3.5 percent last month. While that still pales in comparison to the Facebook “Like” widget, which leads the pack at 10.8 percent adoption, Google +1 is spreading with impressive speed. In fact, Google +1 buttons have already surpassed Twitter Tweet plugins on the home page of top sites.
The figures don’t represent presence on individual content pages, which are often where widgets are used most frequently. However, other home page statistics do give a good idea of how each social site is being seen by major web properties. When looking at standard links to social network pages, Facebook continues to be the leader, with a 47.4 percent adoption. Twitter comes in second at 41.4 percent, and YouTube comes in third at 16.75 percent. Google+ has no links so far, largely because Google+ for businesses won’t be launched until later this year.
What does the study teach us? For one, that Google +1 is alive and continuing to grow. We’ll know more about its overall success once figures start to level out. However, Facebook is still the recognized leader by a broad margin.
[Sources include: BrightEdge]
