Two Announcements from Google to Pay Attention

If you haven’t been following the tech news scene lately Google made two announcements that all bloggers and website owners should pay attention to.

The first one is called +1, and it’s basically a button you use to recommend stuff around the web. Google says that “the +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.” Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.”

The button appears both on pages inside websites as well as directly in the search results. Why you should pay attention to this? Because clicks on +1 buttons are going to start influencing search results, so might start playing a role in your search engine optimization. If you want to add it to your site here’s the page to get the code.

The second announcement is called Google+ (I know, they need to hire someone to come up with better names…). This one is Google’s attempt to start a real social network around its services and online properties. I recommend reading Search Engine Land’s coverage of the topic if you want to know more about it.

Here’s a quotation:

What about the product itself? Google dubs Google+ as a “project” rather than a product, stressing it’s part of making Google itself more social rather than being a standalone social network to take on Facebook.

“It’s ‘Plus’ because it takes products from Google and makes them better and ‘project’ because it’s an ongoing set of products,” said Vic Gundotra, the senior vice president who oversees Google’s social products.

I’ll keep you guys updated as I find more about those two new products/projects.