Rubenerd

With the launch of their Google+ social network, Google have now allowed webmasters to have the +1 buttons on their pages. Should I use them?

From http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/:

Add +1 to your pages to help your site stand out. +1 buttons let people who love your content recommend it on Google search

Thinking out loud

Aside from having pages ranked with these buttons appearing on their new Google+ profiles, it's clear Google plans to use these to influence their search results. The potential ethical dilemma this introduces is for another post.

I've eschewed (gesundheit) having external, dynamically loaded JavaScript here since this site's inception because of privacy and speed concerns, but this is the first time I've had an inkling of questioning my decision.

Given these +1 buttons are appearing in all their search results, would it make much practical difference allowing you to click here too? Either way, it's an optional process you're entering into, I'd just be making it a bit easier to share on sites such as Google+.

I'm not sure. What do you think?

Would be no problem if they did this

This wouldn't the first time I've let people share my posts with another service; until the latest site redesign I had a beautifully simple, static Bookmark on del.icio.us link that worked like this:

<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=[PERMALINK]&title=[TITLE]">Bookmark This on Del.icio.us</a>

Then there were the ways you could allow people to subscribe to your blog in various blog platforms, such as Google Reader:

<a href="http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=//rubenerd.com/feed/">Google Reader</a>

Many of my concerns would be alleviated if Google had a similar, GET request mechanism for +1 instead of relying on JavaScript. This would be cool:

<a href="http://plus.google.com/share?url=[PERMALINK]&title=[TITLE]">+1</a>

I suppose they're doing some verification in that JavaScript to prevent click fraud, and to tie a vote to a particular Google account; but then again the del.icio.us link essentially achieved the same thing while being static, provided you were logged into your del.icio.us account.

Oh well, I suppose I'd need JavaScript after all if I wanted to implement this.