Search Engines Category Archive

Create a Google +1 button for an entire site

7 Replies Christopher Roberts

About a week ago, I posted about how Technology Bloggers now supports Google Authorship, so that writers can now claim posts as their own via linking them to their Google + profile. This article is also about the blog integrating further with Google’s growing social network: Google +.

Until recently it was not possible to create a sitewide Google +1 button, so that users could +1 your entire website; before you only used to be able to +1 the exact page you were on. However thanks to one of Google’s recent updates, it is now possible to +1 an entire site!

If you are a website/blog owner, then this article is probably going to be of particular use to you 🙂

I have recently added a sitewide Google +1 button to Technology Bloggers sidebar, which sits on the sidebar, next to our other social widgets.

Social media buttonsTo get a +1 button, you need to visit the Google +1 Button customisation page. There you can choose the style of your button, how big it is and the language used. What most people probably then miss is the ‘Advanced options’ link.

Advanced Options

If you click ‘Advanced options’, you get a whole new set of options drop down. One of these options is URL to +1. Usually when you place a +1 button on your site and a user clicks it, it +1’s that exact page. However if you enter your sites URL into the box and then get the code, when a user clicks your +1 button it +1’s your entire site.

Google +1 ButtonFor more information on the URL +1’d when users click your button, please see Google’s URL configuration explanation.

Sharing

When someone clicks +1, they will also be given the option to share the content/page to their circles. Usually Google will fetch the page title, and choose a selection of text and an image from the page users are currently on, however it is now possible to customise this too by customising the +Snippet.

Scroll down the page and you are able to select the type of page users are on, is it a local business, article, book, organisation, event, review etc.? You can also choose the title, description and image of the share. If you have created a sitewide share button, usually the button will offer users to share the current page, however by customising the +Snippet, you can make it so that your chosen title, text and image are what are shared, not the one Google automatically selects.

To implement the snippets you just have to add a few meta tags or some HTML code to your page.

Problems

One small problem I have come across when implementing this on Technology Bloggers is that you can’t successfully run 2 +1 buttons on the same page. That means that if you want to have a sitewide button, so users can +1 and share your homepage, and a button on every individual page, where users can +1 and share that page, it is not entirely possible.

The code of the button determines the URL to be +1’d, so it is completely possible that you can have 2 buttons, 1 for the page and one for the site, however the problem is with the +Snippet and the sharing, as both buttons inherit the meta data, meaning that when you share the individual page, it doesn’t share data from that page, but your generic sitewide text, image and title.

It isn’t really a major fault, and with a bit of clever scripting (and a lot of time) I am sure I could get it to work the way I want it to. I am sure Google will release an update at some point which allows you to have 2 +1 buttons, one for the site and one for the page, but in the meantime, we will just have to put up with it not working exactly as we would like it to.

UPDATE: I managed to resolve the problem easier than I thought. I added the +Snippet to the theme header, however told it only to appear on the homepage. The button is designed to fetch the +Snippet from the page users are on, unless the button is designed to +1 a specific URL, in which case, it goes to that URL to fetch the +Snipped – the homepage, where the +Snippet for the entire site is.

You and +1

So what is your opinion on the +1 button, do you use it in the same way/to the same extent the ‘Like’ and ‘Follow’ buttons, or is it not as important? If you own a website or blog, will you be adding a +1 button to it, and if so do you think it is better to have a sitewide +1 or a unique URL +1 button – or both!

The journey of an email – as told by Google

5 Replies Christopher Roberts

Today, when I opened up Google, I saw something new. In the past Google has used the space directly below the search box to notify users of holiday events, privacy policy updates, tributes to industry legends – such as the Steve Jobs tribute, among other things.

Google's Tribute to Steve Jobs

Google's tribute to industry legend - Steve Jobs

Today however Google is using this spot to advertise its new feature, which lets you follow the journey of an email: ‘The Story of Send’.

Google's homepage with a link to 'The Story of Send'

Google advertises 'The Story of Send: Follow an email on its journey.' on its homepage

When you click the link, you are taken to a page on Google’s Green website (.google.com/green) which tells you how you can

“Take a journey through Google’s data centers by following an email along its path.”

Click ‘Start the story’ and the journey begins! Google takes you through an interactive journey of a Gmail email, from when you hit send on your device, to when it arrives at its destination.

The tour takes about 5 minutes (around 50 if you watch all the videos) however, as we all know, the journey of a real email, takes seconds – if that sometimes.

It is evident that the project is meant to be promotional for Google, as it points out all the good points along the journey. For example, how they have ‘built an extensive Internet backbone across the U.S.‘ to speed things up; how they ‘protect your message with a wide range of security measures‘ and how their data centres use ‘50% less energy than typical data centers‘ etc.

What the journey fails to point out is the less desirable things that go on. One example being how your email is read (or spidered) by Google Bots/Spiders, keywords are picked out, and then relevant ads are displayed alongside the message. Another being how Google want not only to own the systems which deliver your emails, but also the infrastructure (the cables and power) which gets it there – is that not a bit of a monopoly?

I like Google, I think it does a wonderful job, and it is great that it offers us all so much for free, however they do also do a good job of covering up the stuff they don’t want us to here.

Check out the video below for more. I found it and tweeted about it a while ago, however never really found an article for it to go in.

So, have you taken the journey yet? Aside from the obvious PR (public relations not PageRank) stuffed in, it does make interesting viewing.

More interested in talking about the ethics of Google? Add your view below 🙂

Why not talk about them both!

Your views?

What are your thoughts on the recent PageRank update?

7 Replies Christopher Roberts

Google’s head of Google webspam, Matt Cutts (a Google employee and guru on everything search) is always telling webmasters not to obsess too much about PageRank. I would agree, it is not always that accurate, (give or take 1 rank either way) probably because it is not publicly updated that frequently – it is always updating, results are just not released regularly to the public.

At the end of the day, PageRank is just a lovely green (or maybe a not so lovely white) bar that a page is given. It doesn’t necessarily correlate to how a site is performing in the SERPs, and doesn’t guarantee good rankings.

That said, I am pleased for the blog, as our green increased a little, and white retreated back, as Technology Bloggers jumped from a 3 to a 4 🙂

Google say on their own website that PageRank represents:

“Google’s view of the importance of a webpage”

That is a direct quote from Google.

So basically, pages ranked 0/1 (in Google’s view) aren’t that special, there are loads out there, nothing makes them stand out. Pages with a PageRank 2 are more important, they are special, but not that special. The further up the scale you go, the more value your page is worth. You might have a high value homepage, but low internal pages, that is to be expected, as a lot of the algorithm is based on links.

One would assume that if you have serious traffic, you should be right at the top of the PageRank scale, as people find your page very useful, and therefore Google must think your page is important.

Google’s PageRank

Until very recently, Google.com has been a PageRank 10. It is the most visited site on the internet, by a long way. From what I understand, the site receives around 1,050,000,000 (1.05 billion) unique visitors a year. Facebook is second, with around 950,000,000 (0.95 billion) unique visitors a year – note not all those people have accounts.

Twitter gets just 220,000,000 visitors a year (0.22 billion). So why is it then that in the recent PageRank update, Google ranked its main homepage (Google.com) 9/10, it ranked Facebook 9/10, but it ranked Twitter 10/10. Twitter is one of around 10 sites on the net with a PageRank 10. Twitter is only the 8th most globally visited site on the web, whereas giants Google and Facebook are clear leaders.

The UN and the The U.S. Government’s Official Web Portal are two of the other few sites with a PageRank 10 on the web. Updates over the last year have seen a lot of PageRank 10’s loose their rankings. Why?

Larry and Sergey with the Google logo in the background

Larry Page and Sergey Brin - the founders of Google.

Is the web getting less ‘important’? What are your thoughts on this? I find it really interesting how Larry Page‘s (co-founder of Google) algorithm, which is used by Google, ranks Google less than top.

Talk to me 🙂