Google +1 for all Websites

Webmasters can now put Google's "like competitor" +1 on their web pages. Many webmasters will groan with trepidation at the thought of having to squeeze yet another piece of social javascript junk onto their beautifully crafted pages, but this one may well turn out to be essential. Google, in its quest to react better and quicker in its search results, is using the +1 data as a quality signal. There are of course space, taste and clutter issues with all of these share/like buttons, but for manageability I've kept the implementation workload down by incorporating all buttons into a single PHP function.

One neat feature of Google's is the Javascript callback option, so that a function of yours can get called when a +1 (or a -1) is registered. This way, with a bit of ajax and some server-side logging, you can keep track of how much this button gets used. You can then decide which pages need it, or whether it should stay on your site at all.

To put the button on your own webpages, follow their instructions: Add +1 to your pages to help your site stand out.

You can also watch the Google Video, "Introducing the +1 Button":

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