The SEO Effect Google +1 Experiment Whitepaper

Whitepaper
“The SEO Effect Google +1 experiment”

About the influence on rankings, CTR and visits of the new Google +1 button

Wednesday, June 01, 2011
www.seoeffect.com
Gerard Klein & Keesjan Deelstra

Index
Whitepaper ..............................................................................................................................1
“The SEO Effect Google +1 experiment” ......................................................................................1
Summary ................................................................................................................................3
Introduction ............................................................................................................................4
What is Google +1? ................................................................................................................5
Where do I find the +1 results?............................................................................................8
How does +1 influence the Google search? ........................................................................8
Who can see the personalized annotations of the +1 buttons? ............................................9
Are +1 votes public?............................................................................................................9
Can you see who +1‟d your web pages? ...........................................................................10
How to add the +1 button to your site? ..............................................................................10
What is the influence of a +1 button on indexation? ..........................................................10
What is the difference between a +1 button and a Google Buzz button on a web page?? .10
Try the Google +1 button yourselves? ...............................................................................10
The Google +1 experiment from SEO Effect.........................................................................13
Qualitative experiment.......................................................................................................15
The experiment: what did we see, what did we measure: ..................................................15
How the search results were affected. ...............................................................................15
Other search results do not show a +1, ever! ....................................................................22
How +1 affects SERPS en CTR ...........................................................................................22
Before and after: the differences lined up .............................................................................24
Traffic share ...................................................................................................................24
301 redirects and +1 votes do not mix? ..........................................................................25
Observation affects reality… .............................................................................................27
Conclusions of the +1 experiment ........................................................................................28
Tips to maximize positive +1 results ..................................................................................28
About SEOEffect.com...........................................................................................................30
Appendixes ..........................................................................................................................31 Chapter: “The SEO Effect Google +1 experiment”
Accountability experiment .................................................................................................31
Sizes of the Google +1 buttons for websites......................................................................31

SEO Effect Whitepaper “The SEO Effect Google+1 button experiment”
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Summary
In April 2011 SEO Effect tools conducted an investigation into the behavior of Google‟s +1
button. This +1 button is the answer to Facebook‟s „like‟ and appears to be the start of the
rollout of the Google social network.
SEO Effect tools called upon the readers to „plusone‟ three pages in the Google search
results and to tweet their action. 72 people responded and SEO Effect monitored the impact
on ranking, traffic and visibility.
Based on this qualitative experiment (on a Google experiment), the following careful
conclusions are drawn.
 +1 markings seem to have a positive effect on the number of impressions in search
results because they rank higher when the same person re-visits the same search or
rank higher results in the social circle of those who marked the link.
 A +1 mark also has a higher visibility in a search result, which could raise the click
through rate to the website.
All in all, this increased visibility and CTR can raise traffic to a website‟s substantially. We
measured an increase of 20% with our limited experiment. Be sure to read the tips at the end
of this document about how you can add the +1 button to your website and increase +1
marks.

Chapter: Summary

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Introduction
At March 31 th, 2011 Google introduced its variant of the Facebook like button: the Google
+1. Pronounced as “Google plus one”.
We, from SEO Effect tools, decided to
perform an experiment to learn more
about the effects this button has on
rankings, traffic and other benefits it might
have for its users. However, the Google
+1 is still in a bright new and experimental
stage, so we could only do an exploratory
experiment. It would be nice if we could
come up with some proper hypotheses
about the algorithms that drive this +1
Image 1: Announcement of the +1 button in the search button. Like throwing a stone in a pond to
results at March 30, 2011 see if something stirs and affects traffic,
ranking and visibility. In this whitepaper
we discuss our findings of our +1 experiment. But before we begin: what is the +1 button
anyway?

Chapter: Introduction

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What is Google +1?
After the complete rollout, the Google +1 will
have two incarnations:
 A button to vote on a web page,
 A button in the Google search results.

Image 2: mockup of the integration of a +1
button on a web page. Source:
searchengineland, Google I/O conference
May 10, 2011

The first application is a voting button that can be placed on web pages, resembling the
Facebook like button or the Tweet button. Besides that – and this is already live as an
experiment – you can find the +1 buttons directly in the search results.

This +1 button in the search results allows you to like or recommend a search result within
your on-line circle of friends. Google announced at the Google I/O conference on May 10 th,
that a similar button will become available for on your website. Via Danny Sullivan form
Searchengineland.com, some pictures are available form that presentation about the website
version of the +1 button
The way it works is not unlike the Facebook like button. In webmaster tools, statistics will
become available about the demographic profile of the visitors that „plusoned‟ your site,
along with other interesting data.

Chapter: What is Google +1?

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Image 3: prototype +1 rapport demographics in Google webmaster tools.
Source: searchengineland, Google I/O conference May 10, 2011


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Image 4: Explanation Google +1 from Google

Instead of following Bing‟s lead and integrate Facebooks „like‟ button in the search results,
Google choose to do this with their own +1 button.

Figuur 5: naast de title van een Google resultaat ziet u de +1 button

Image 7: kunt de others in your “social circle” will see deze marked
Figuur 6: You and+1 button markeren door te klikken en if youactie
direct teniet result.door nogmaals te klikken
this search doen

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Where do I find the +1 results?
For now you can only see the webpages marked with +1 in Googe.com if you are logged in
with your Google account. In Google.nl for example, you will find the +1-ed pages annotated
with a star. See image 30 for an example.

In Google.com, both organic and paid search result have a +1 button. Till June 1 you had to
enter a Google experiment to see the +1 button. From that date on the +1 button is availibel
to every logged in searcher on Google.com. So if you applied for the Google experiment, you
could +1 an Adwords advertisement or an organic search result.

Image 8: Dutch Adwords result with a +1 button

If people from your social circle clicked a +1 button on your web page‟s search result or your
website page itself, you‟ll see their profile next to the +1 annotation. If the +1 clicks do not
include anyone form your social circle, you will only see the total number of +1‟s in the
annotation.

Image 9: Google result with +1 annotation

How does +1 influence the Google search?
Showing +1 votes form the searcher‟s social circle in the search results, influences two

things:
1. The search engine rankings themselves; Google indicates that social
recommendations with the +1 button could be used to influence search results, since
they improve the relevancy of a result. But Google also notes that there are many
indicators for a ranking and that they are very cautious applying this new type of
parameters.

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2. The click troughs form the search results; social recommendations from a circle of
friends are often even more convincing than expert reviews. It‟s an equivalent of word
of mouth, directly in the search results presented at the moment that the searcher
needs it. Also the annotations are a visual clue that will make a result stick out and
that will also increase traffic to your site from that search result.

A picture form a presentation form the 2011 Google I/O conference shows that URL‟s with a
+1 have a higher CTR than form a search result to a webpage than a URL without + 1 votes.
This feature is not live yet.

Image 10: Prototype Google Webmaster tools annotaded impressions and CTR Source:
searchengineland, Google I/O conference 10 may 2011

Who can see the personalized annotations of the +1 buttons?
If you join the Google experiment, you can see the recommendations form your Google
social circle, which consists of:
 People in your Google Gmail or Google Talk chat list
 People from your Google contact Group (my contacts group)
 People you follow via Google Reader or Google Buzz

Are +1 votes public?
Yes, your Google +1 votes are public. Every (logged in) Google user can see your votes and
if they are in your social circle, they will also see who voted. Your votes are also in your
Google public profile, unless you disallow that in your profile settings.

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Can you see who +1‟d your web pages?
No, personal information is not made public. However, Google announced that aggregated
demographic data about the group that „plusoned‟ your page will become available. For
example data like: “20% of the visitors that voted via the +1 button is form New York”. Also,
there will be information via Google Webmaster Tools. When and how is still unknown.

How to add the +1 button to your site?
Next to marking your webpages in a Google search result, there will also be a +1 button that
can be placed on your website. This will be done via a “code snippet”. You can go here and
choose the size and language of your choice: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

What is the influence of a +1 button on indexation?
Google states that if a +1 button is clicked or even gets an impression on your webpage, that
it will trigger a visit from the Google bot to (re)crawl and index this page. So refrain form
putting a +1 button on a non-public page!

What is the difference between a +1 button and a Google Buzz button on a web
page??
A Google Buzz button is meant as a conversation starter, where the +1 button is solely a
recommendation.

Figuur 11: Openbaar Google profiel met +1‟s tab

Try the Google +1 button yourselves?
At the time this piece was written, the functionality was only available at the Google.com site,
To see it in action, follow these steps:
1. Login to your Google account
2. Not necessary anymore: Go to http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html and
participate in the +1 button experiment

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Image 12: If you join the +1 experiment via http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html you see the
+1 button near each search result, From June 1 on this step is not necessary anymore.

3. Proceed to http://www.google.com/ the US Google site.
a. For non English Google users, please note: If you just surf to Google.com,
Google will intelligently think ahead and switch to your own language. The +1
button will not work in that case. You might want to click the Google.com in
English link to go to the English version of Google.com. You can find that link
at the bottom right of the search field.


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Image 13: For non USA readers. Use the Google.com in English link to really got to
the English US site

4. If you do a search in Google.com, you will find the +1 button next to the search
results.

Image 14: A search for „google‟ with the top 2 organic search results. Number two – Google images – got
a +1 vote form this visitor. The first one did not.

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The Google +1 experiment from SEO Effect
Soon after the announcement form Google about the +1 button experiment, SOE effect
started their own experiment. We wanted to investigate how the search results were
influenced if a number of people voted for a certain page via the +1 button.
We made three pages of our own site available for this experiment. Our own site was the
best fit for this experiment because; we had access to all the data; it was an international site
and we had the freedom to make mistakes. And yes, if any extra attention for our tools would
derive from it, we wouldn‟t mind…
The three pages that participants were asked to „plusone‟ were:
 http://www.seoeffect.com/
 http://www.seoeffect.com/demo-and-specs/keyword-research-tool.php
 http://www.seoeffect.com/blog/Participate-in-the-SEO-Effect-Google-plus1-button-
experiment-/

We asked people to participate via our newsletter and social media (Facebook, LinkedIn and
Twitter). As a token of gratitude they received this whitepaper 1 SEO Effect credit with a
value of $9,-.

People were asked to confirm their participation via Twitter, which helped to spread the word
and made it easy to reach the (self imposed) minimum of 50 participants.

Chapter: The Google +1 experiment from SEO Effect
Image 15: Participants tweeted their contribution, confirming their involvement to the experiment and to
encourage others. These tweets made their way into Google, which might contaminate the experiment a
little.

So the word about this experiment was spread via:
 The blogpost
 An e-mail newsletter to SEO Effect subscribers
 The tweets form participants

A detailed explanation on how to participate was posted on:
http://www.seoeffect.com/blog/Participate-in-the-SEO-Effect-Google-plus1-button-
experiment-/

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Image 16: part of the blog post with an explanation on all the required steps

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Qualitative experiment
We were conducting an experiment (ours) on an experiment (Google‟s). It was the first step
in understanding the ins and outs of Google‟s +1 button. With this qualitative experiment we
were just observing its behavior, hoping to get to a few hypotheses on which to do more
(quantitative) research.

We noticed some unexpected behavior. Some people were unable to get the +1 button to
show up (even though all steps were followed correctly). Also – especially in the first few
days – the results were inconsistent. Which Google may have caused by still tweaking the
algorithms that drive the +1 buttons behavior.

Participating in Google‟s +1 button experiment depended on an individual browser, as if it
was stored in a cookie. So you not only had to be logged in, but you also had to manage
participation on each individual computer and on each individual browser.

In the Opera browser the Google experiment did not seem to work.

The experiment: what did we see, what did we measure:
Via Google webmaster tools we measured the influence of our experiment on the views and
click troughs. In SEO Effect we measured traffic share. „Traffic share‟ is a metric that's is
based on the slice of the "search pie" your site receives for a specific keyword. The bigger
you traffic share, the bigger your piece of the pie (and the smaller your competitor‟s). We
also monitored the SERPS in Google.com.

How the search results were affected.

Figuur 17: Google.com resultaat zonder +1

Normally a search result in Google.com looks like this. The „you shared this annotation‟ is
from Google Buzz social sharing.

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After 10 participants had marked the three URL‟s with the +1 button, the search result for
keyword „seo effect‟ looked like this:

Not a single person is visible in
the result with their +1 votes for
this URL. The social share
status is from Twitter

3 people are visible with their
+1 vote in the result for this
URL.

3 other people are visible with
their +1 vote in the result for
this URL

Image 18: after 10 participants, the first +1 annotations appear for two URL‟s


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Image 19: after 25 participants: no change…


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Image 20: after 29 participants: the „keyword‟ URL drops form the first three search results and re-
appears below the “Show more” results, with four “votes”.


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Image 21: after 29 participants. A query for „keyword research tool‟ shows a result at the bottom of the
page, caused by the Google Buzz. The +1 votes do not seem to have an influence.

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Image 22: after 40 participants, it looks as if Google has reset the +1 markings for the three test URL‟s.
Some other pages at the still have the +1 annotations.

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Image 23: after 60 participants, day 3 of the experiment. A query for „keyword
research tool‟ shows a result at the bottom because of the Google Buzz entry.
The +1 markings for the three test ULR‟s to not seem to have any effect. The +1
vote for the Google adwords tool is shown though.

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Image 24: After 60 participants the query „seo effect‟ shows this result at position number
one. Only four of the 60 participants are mentioned.

Other search results do not show a +1, ever!
One thing that struck us as odd is that we never ever saw another +1 result in a search query
that was not related to our experiment. This might be because too few people in our social
network were using the button for anything other than our experiment. But even more
obvious queries like “+1 button” didn‟t show any „plusones‟, only some results from Twitter.

Chapter: /How +1 affects SERPS en CTR

Image 25: Search results for „+1 button‟ did not show any +1 result, which is odd.

How +1 affects SERPS en CTR
To circumvent the effect of personal search results, we tracked a number of pages with
Webmaster Tools from Google. That tells the average position during a chosen time interval.
This data is available for keywords and pages over the last 30 days. We will provide the
relative data to give you an impression on how things were affected.
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Image 26: Webmaster tools data 30 days from the start of the experiment. The effect from the SEO Effect
+1 experiment on the impressions and click through rates from search results to the site is short lived.

Chapter: /How +1 affects SERPS en CTR

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Before and after: the differences lined up

Based on the differences over 30 days before and after the experiment form April 4 th we
noticed the following effects:

 The homepage of SEO Effect did not receive more impressions but the average
position for a number of keywords did rise with 24%.
 The page about keyword research did receive more clicks and also the average
position did rise with 20%.
 The blog post also received more traffic but that is only logical since it was new. Also
Google‟s +1 experiment was announced shortly before, so it makes sense that
people only started to search for that word after March 30 th, 2011.

URL Impressions Clicks CTR % Avg. position
Indexed op 100
before after before after before after before after
homepage 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 76
/keyword research- 100 120 100 1600 100 150 100 80
tool.php
blog/Participate…Google- 1600 0 35 - 2 - 30
plus-1-button-experiment

Image 27: the differences for the website www.seoeffect.com before and after the experiment, indexed to
100 as a baseline. The average position for a number of keywords has improved by 20%.

Of course these percentages have a low significance, given the investigative and qualitative
nature of our experiment.

Traffic share Chapter: Before and after: the differences lined up
SEO Effect‟s „monitor trends‟ taught us that the traffic share for the three pages has risen
from 100 to 103 percent. The weighted overall traffic share rose form 100 to 102 percent. De
overall weighted traffic share has risen from 100 to 102% Of course also these rise is not
significant but marks a direction. The +1 marks seems to raise the „traffic share‟.

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Image 28: In SEO Effect a raise in traffic share of 3 points was measured for the experiment pages

301 redirects and +1 votes do not mix?
At the start of the experiment we accidentally created a not very elegant URL for the blog
post. This inspired us to also test the influence of a 301 redirect. After the first +1 votes, we

Chapter: Before and after: the differences lined up
renamed the URL and redirected the old URL to the new URL. After this, we noticed that the
first +1 votes were no longer shown as soon as the new URL was indexed. So it seems that
Google‟s +1 algorithms do not take 301 redirects into account. We hope this will be resolved
in the future because 301 redirects are often used during site migration, maintenance or in
case of errors such as ours. On the other hand: it might make sense not to allow a +1 vote to
be transferred to another page. It could be misused, for example to redirect
recommendations from a well-liked product to another product with a better margin. But if the
link juice can be transferred from one page to another, it would be logical to allow the same
thing for +1 votes. For bona fide websites, it would be a shame if the +1 history would be lost
if a 301 is used. Hence this issue will remain on our watch list.

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Image 29: The „handover‟ of the two URL‟s. The old URL (at the bottom) is still in the Google index and
has the =1 marking. The improved URL is also detected by Google and has no +1 mark.

Image 30: 5 days later, due to the 301 has made the old URL disappear and with it the +1 mark.


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Observation affects reality…
Alas, on the Internet there is no such thing as a lab-test. So it is impossible to measure the
effect of the +1 votes on rankings in isolation.
We have to take into account factors like:
 Seasonal trends and weather; maybe some seasonal effect or not so nice weather
caused a change in search behavior.
 Spreading the experiment via Twitter; the tweets and retweets may have influenced
the rankings.
 A too rapid increase of +1 votes; most of the votes took place within 48 hours. This
could have triggered Google‟s damping factor, which would weaken the ranking
improvements that would have been caused by the +1‟s.
 Geographical differences; most of the 73 participants lived in the Netherlands,
whereas we measured the before- and after effects in WMT worldwide. Google does
mark the +1‟s with a star in the Netherlands, but does not show the social aspect with
every search.
 Google indicated that they reset the +1 results several times.
 The +1 votes were only displayed when logged in to your own account. Because of
this, other personal information also became part of the experiment. For example
search results that were pushed to the top because of earlier visits or because of
retweets.
 The amount of participants; because there were only 73, this experiment is definitely
not a quantitative trial nor a scientific experiment The numbers en influence on
ranking, traffic share, visits and search engine visibility are indicative and very
temporary. The conclusions are more testable hypotheses than 95% significant
conclusions.


Image 31: In Google.nl self-made URLs were temporarily marked with a star. Thirty days after the
experiment it seems like Google has reset the data and the stars have disappeared.

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Conclusions of the +1 experiment
Because of the many distorting factors and the fact that it wasn‟t a quantitative trial, the
conclusions we can draw are very preliminary and bring up more questions than they can
answer. When the +1 button becomes a permanent Google feature and the data stops being
reset regularly, more definite tests can be done.

These are our very preliminary conclusions:
 We saw a 20% increase in rankings and corresponding increases in CTR and visits.
 +1 markings seem to have a positive effect on the number of impressions in the
search results because they:
o have a higher ranking when people re-visit earlier searches.
o end up higher in the social circle of the person that casted the +1 vote.
 +1 markings also have a positive effect on the visibility of a search result.
 A URL marked with a +1 button, subsequently appears in one‟s own search results
and also in local versions of Google outside Google.com – with a star.
So pour hypothesis is that the +1 button does have an effect on your rankings. Further
research needs to be done to figure to find outr if that is correct ans out how strong that
influence is and what each parameter mentioned above influences.
 Google resets its data regularly OR the influence of a +1 marking deteriorates with
time.
 The search results never showed: more than three people‟s names and avatar with
their +1 marking.
 We have never seen more than 4 markings on 1 URL, even though there were more
than 60 at that particular moment.
 +1 markings on URLS that are afterwards redirected via a 301 do not keep their +1
marking. This could be changed or this could be on purpose because otherwise the
positive feedback on one page can be channeled to another URL. On the other hand:
linkjuice can be redirected through a 301, so why not +1‟s as well?
Chapter: Conclusions of the +1 experiment
Tips to maximize positive +1 results
 Place a +1 button on each page of your web site, its available now from May 31
2011..
 Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/ to grab your +1 button.
o Tip: there are seven sizes of +1 buttons, with and without number of votes,
varying from 24 x15 pixels to 50 x 65 pixels (see appendix) Also don‟t forget to
choose your language. This language choice is used on the mouse over
tooltip.
 It will become important to not just pay attention to your Facebook and Twitter circle,
but also to your social circle on Google. Expand your Google circle by adding
contacts to;
o Google Gmail;
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o Google Talk;
o Google contact group (my contacts group)
 Import your Outlook contacts
 And even better: try to become part of someone else‟s contact list
Also get people to follow you on Google Reader or Google Buzz.
 Don‟t start any big campaigns or enable any clickfarms to gain massive amounts of
+1‟s for your webpages. Too fast or unlikely increases in +1‟s will most likely activate
a damping algorithm, which will subdue the effects. Furthermore are +1‟s only able to
higher your visibility within one‟s own social circle, so an Indian who recommends
your webpage is absolutely useless to you.
 Consider experimenting with an Adwords add that encourages viewers to +1 your
webpage. But wait to do so until the +1 tool becomes available in your country‟s
version of Google as well. If you do not wait, the advertisement will also be shown to
people who will not be able to use the +1 button.
 Consider writing a description meta tag which will be shown in Google, that
recommends clicking the +1 button. The home page‟s description tag is regularly
shown in Google search results as a description of a search result. Again: wait to do
this until the +1 tool has passed its experimental phase.

Thank you for your interest in this whitepaper. We‟d love to here your thoughts, comments,
questions and idea‟s.

Chapter: Conclusions of the +1 experiment

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About SEOEffect.com
SEO Effect Tools is a SEO suite which helps you with your search engine optimization in a
step by step workflow. The tools are integrated with your Google analytics data, which allows
you to make the best decisions.

SEO Effect consists of a small team that will support you with their SEO knowledge and
tools. Keesjan Deelstra is our leading SEO specialist and is known as the author of “The
Handbook for Search Engine Marketing”. Read more about the SEO effect team.

Try SEO Effect now for free. Go to www.SEOEffect.com and create a free account. Chapter: About SEOEffect.com

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Appendixes

Accountability experiment
We posted our blogpost on Monday 3 th April, 2011.

emails sent: 3213
blog post: 3 april 2011
amount of retweets: 78
amount of +1 marks: 3*76

Sizes of the Google +1 buttons for websites

Image 32: sizes of the Google +1 buttons for web pages. Source: searchengineland,
Google I/O conference 10 May 2011 Chapter: Appendixes

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The SEO Effect Google +1 Experiment Whitepaper

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