Why Every Company Must Install the Google +1 on its Website Now

Last week, Wired published a blog post by Ryan Singel about what Google currently is doing with data from its +1 sharing button. Singel got confirmation from the search giant that it is exploring how to use +1 data as a social signal that could re-rank search results.

From my perspective, search -- and Google search -- is still more important to the majority of B2B marketers than social. Google became a real-time search engine in late 2009 when it licensed the Twitter fire hose, and introduced Google Profiles that personalized search results based upon social connections on Twitter and other services.

It made a huge step forward in social with Google+ over the summer and while the jury is still out whether it can sustain its use and threaten Facebook in the mainstream, it made Google's strategy to leverage social to protect its core search business more clear.

Reading the Signals from Google

I argued last year that all the social media strategy and tactic in the world is only as good as how much search optimization is taken into account in order to have a direct impact on business results.  That's why is it very important to take all the information you can get about Google's algorithm changes in order to understand as much as possible about how the search engine works.

The latest enhancements to the +1 button, which allow people to share content with their Circles on Google+ much like the Facebook Like button, make it obvious that social signals will play a growing role in search results. However, much is still unclear as there are over 200 signals Google uses now within its algorithms.

Regardless, it seems to me that it's now obvious that every website should install the Google +1 button now. Why wouldn't a marketer or PR person at a minimum want to give visitors the opportunity to share their web owned media content via +1, therefore adding a signal that will help that page in search? I can't think of a reason not to do so, even while we are waiting for more insight from Google.

Can you?