Happy 13th birthday Google! Thanks for all the ups and not so much for all the downs. There’s been a lot of controversy over the years, but no one can deny just how much they’ve revolutionized the internet, so congrats to them.
In honor of this special occasion, I’ll bring to you a recap of the major Google +1 button and Google + network updates that have made these initiatives much more useful for webmasters over the past few weeks. Google have implemented a customizable share option for the Google +1 button (similar to the Facebook Like button). This lets users to share content straight from a webpage to their Google + circles, as well as the option to add inline annotations. It has also further integrated Google + hangouts with YouTube, introduced Google translate, allows users to block and ignore others and offers user list suggstions.
Share links with Google + 1 Snippets
Just like the Facebook Like button, when you click on the +1 button, a pop up will appear that allows you the share the content to your Google + circles. This pop up will show a link, image and a description and these will appear in your profile if you choose to share it in your circles (similar to when you click the Facebook Like button on a webpage). This is called a snippet. This makes it easier for visitors who like your content to start a conversation with people in their circles about it.
Currently, this feature hasn’t been universally rolled out yet and you need sign up to the Google+ Platform Preview to see this.
Customize Google Snippets
Google takes snippets one step further than Facebook by allowing you to customize the name, image and description that appears when your content is shared through the Google +1 button.
Google explains,
“You may already be using this markup to build rich annotations for your pages on Google Search. If not, marking up your pages is simple. Just add the correct schema.org attributes to the data already present on your pages. You’ll set a name, image, and description in your code:
<body itemscope itemtype=“http://schema.org/Article”>
<h1 itemprop=“name“>This is the article name</h1>
<img itemprop=“image“ src=”thumbnail.jpg” />
<p itemprop=“description“>This is the description of the article.</p>
</body>
Example code containing each of the +Snippet attributes”
Inline annotations
This is another great feature for webmasters. Now when visitors view a page, they can see the profile picture and face of people in their Google + network that has +1’d the page. This helps to increase visitor engagement by reminding them it has been recommended by someone in their network.
Here’s how it looks according to Google:
To add inline annotations, you just need to update your +1 button code. Go to the configuration tool in Google Webmasters Tool, select ‘inline’ from the ‘Annotation’ menu, and copy a new snippet of code and pasting it onto your site as you previously did.
How To Translate Google + Posts Into Different Languages
Goodbye communication barriers. Google + has released a new Chrome browser extension to translate Google + posts into more than 50 languages, known as Google Translate for Google+.
Click here to learn exactly how to use Google Translate for Google +.
Google + Hangouts on YouTube
Google have put its ownership of YouTube to good use. You can now conveniently initiate Google + hangouts on YouTube.
Click on the ‘share’ button under any YouTube video and you will see an icon on the right that says, “Watch with your friends….Start a Google Hangout”. Then it just works the same way as initiating a hangout from Google +; just select who you want to hangout with and you’re good to go.
Ignore people on Google +
Google has made Google + more similar to real life by giving you the option to ignore and block people on Google +.
Google employee Olga Wichrowska mentions, “Ignoring someone is basically saying you’re just not interested…Maybe you don’t know them, or maybe you don’t want to see what they’re sharing.”
Note: Ignoring someone is different to blocking them. When you ignore someone, you will not see their posts in your stream, receive notifications about them and it will remove them from your circles page. They won’t know you ignored them and can still see your stream and comment on it. Blocking someone gives you the privacy of ignoring someone, as well as blocks them from seeing what you post.
Check out how to do this below:
Google + now offering suggestions
When you sign in as a new user, you’ll see the new suggested users list of active members of Google + you can add.
That’s it for the round up on Google +1 and the Google + network. Stay tuned for more updates.
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Much appreciated for the information and share!