There Is One Thing Missing From Google’s +1

David Berkowitz is Senior Director of Emerging Media & Innovation for digital marketing agency 360i, where he develops social media and mobile programs for marketers spanning the media & entertainment, retail, travel, and CPG industries.

Something about Google’s +1 doesn’t add up.

The search giant’s social media initiative, well covered by this outlet, represents a big change in thinking. The concept, revolutionary enough, is that instead of trusting a search engine’s algorithm to deliver the most relevant search results, one should trust their friends’ preferences, along with the preferences of all other searchers.

Both concepts are viable today. Generally speaking, Internet users are well accustomed to receiving recommendations from friends, solicited and unsolicited, and then acting on them. We are also largely comfortable trusting the feedback of strangers, whether they tell us a book on Amazon is worth reading, a hotel on TripAdvisor is clean, or a restaurant on Yelp has the best lobster frittata you’ve ever tasted.

A big selling point of sites like Amazon, TripAdvisor and Yelp is the input of millions of consumers. If those sites relied solely on algorithmically generated recommendations without consumer input, they might not be nearly as successful. Yet with search, we are so dependent on the algorithm. Search is so complicated that an algorithm better know what’s more relevant, or all hope is lost. Why trust our friends and strangers when we can trust the masterwork of the world’s best engineers slaving away for over a decade?

With +1, Google told us to change. This process of change has three significant challenges:

• We must notice that the results are different. After a decade of habitually scanning headlines and brief textual synopses, it’s hard to notice anything else.
• We must act on a +1 listing, which then brings up some information about Google Profiles and a whole new system that for many will be an added hindrance. The beauty of search to date has been its simplicity for the users – enter a query and click a result, ad infinitum.
• We must notice the +1 votes from peers and others, realize that these are different, and act on them accordingly.
All of these challenges to the process pale in comparison to a challenge of perception that can shake the foundations of Google’s image. The +1 listings must be different enough for users to care. If the results with the most +1’s are dramatically different from the order proffered by Google’s algorithm, that means either the people or the algorithm are wrong. Which listing should users trust?
Google for once is ambiguous, suggesting that there are two right answers. In reality, the difference between the two answers must be small, as for the vast majority of queries, there are only 10 natural results displayed out of potentially millions or billions of pages, so Google’s algorithm remains the true arbiter. Yet it still feels like there’s a chance for Google to be wrong, and that goes against more than a decade of users’ faith in the doctrine of Google infallibility.
What +1 lacks most is Facebook. Soon after +1 launched, a browser plug-in was released that shows the number of Facebook “Likes” for any search listing in Google. While the plug-in is currently a bit sluggish, it is fast enough to make its likes far more noticeable than +1’s. Facebook’s concept of liking has been ingrained quickly enough to catch on, so it also benefits from a “first mover” advantage.

via mashable.com

That in turn reveals the answer to our mathematical problems. Google +1 will forever be -1 as long as it doesn’t incorporate Facebook activity. Today, at least, Facebook has the richest data for most Internet users’ social connections. Yet there is value in Google +1 with peers influencing search results, so Google +1 without Facebook adds up to far more than zero. How much of a positive it is remains a mystery. Like most math problems throughout history, there is an answer out there, waiting to be discovered.

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