Webmaster Tools

+1 helps people discover relevant content—a website, a Google search result, or an ad—from the people they already know and trust. The +1 button appears on Google search, on websites, and on ads. For example, you might see a +1 button for a Google search result, Google ad, or next to an article you're reading on your favorite news site.

Adding the +1 button to pages on your own site lets users recommend your content, knowing that their friends and contacts will see their recommendation when it’s most relevant—in the context of Google search results. In addition, a user's +1's appear on the +1 tab of their Google Profile. While +1’s are always public, users can choose to make the +1 tab visible or invisible on their profile.

When a signed-in Google user is searching, your Google search result snippet may be annotated with the names of the user's connections who've +1'd your page. If none of a user's connections has +1'd your page, your snippet may display the aggregate number of +1's your page has received.

Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1's from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality. For +1's, as with any new ranking signal, we are starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.

When you add the +1 button to a page, Google assumes that you want that page to be publicly available and visible in Google Search results. As a result, we may fetch and show that page even if it is disallowed in robots.txt.

Personalized annotations next to your page in search results may increase your site's visibility and make your site's snippet more compelling, which may in turn increase the odds that users will click through to your page.

To view how +1 affects your search traffic, you can use the +1 Metrics tool in Webmaster Tools. Available metrics include:

• Search impact: See the pages on your site that received the most impressions with a +1 annotation, and see how +1 annotations impact clickthrough rate (CTR).
• Activity: See the total number of +1's received by pages on your site.
• Audience: See aggregated information about people who have +1'd your pages, including the total number of unique users, their location, and their age and gender.

You can track visits to your site from Google+ using the HTTP-referrer plus.url.google.com. If you're tracking visits using the old plus.google.com referrer, please update your code.

If a user +1's a URL on your site, the Google search result snippet for that URL may be annotated in search results and search ads.

However, your site may make the same content available via different URLs. For example, your site may have several pages listing the same set of products. (More information about duplicate content.) One page might display products sorted in alphabetical order, while other pages display the same products listed by price or by rating. For example:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&sort=alpha
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&sort=price

If Google knows that these pages have the same content, we may index only one version for our search results. As a result, +1's for the other versions may not appear in search results.

You can make sure Google displays +1 annotations for the most search results possible by adding a rel="canonical" link to the section of the non-preferred versions of each page. This property should point to the canonical version, like this:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&sort=alpha" rel="canonical"

This tells Google: "Of all these pages with identical content, this page is the most useful. Please prioritize it in search results."

Now, when a user +1's a page with a non-canonical URL, Google will associate that +1 with the canonical, preferred version. More information about canonicalization.

The +1 button itself will appear next to your headline on search ads. Personalized annotations will appear beneath your Display URL. For example, Maria +1's a page selling a neat laptop holder on a website. When a search ad with that same URL appears, her friend Sam might see the ad with the note "Maria and 28 other people +1'd this."

The +1 button shows up for signed-in Google users of using a modern browser.

Because people trust their friends’ recommendations, personalized annotations display the faces of friends and social connections who have already +1’d a piece of content.

Google tries to display +1’s to people (specifically those in the user’s social connections) who would find them most useful. We hope that by making these recommendations more discoverable, users will be even more engaged with your site.

Annotations can appear in a couple of ways.

• When a user hovers over the +1 button on a page, we’ll display an annotation showing the faces of friends who have +1’d that page. You don’t need to do anything to make this happen.
• You can also add inline annotations that appear next to the +1 button on your page. To enable these, you’ll need to update the +1 button code.

Note: Inline annotations aren't currently supported in mobile browsers.

Everybody can see aggregate annotations. Signed-in users also see personalized annotations from:

• People in your Google+ circles
• People who have you in a circle in Google+.
• People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list.
• People in your My Contacts group in Google Contacts.
• People you're following in Google Reader and Google Buzz.

Learn more about social connections and +1.

Yes, Google may show personalized annotations to any signed-in user who has a social connection to a +1. However, any Google user can choose whether or not to display their +1's on their Google profile .

Just grab a snippet of code .

You know your page and your users best, so we recommend putting the button wherever you think it will be the most effective. Above the fold, near the title of the page, and close to sharing links is often a good location. It can also be effective to place the +1 button at both the end and the beginning of an article or story.

+1 is a public action, so you should add the button only to public, crawlable pages on your site. Once you add the button, Google may crawl or recrawl the page, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click.

Yes, but you'll need to edit the button code. Use the href attribute to specify the target URL. For example, if your home page has a module linking to your blog, and you want to add a +1 button to that module, edit the value of the href attribute to point to your blog's URL, like this:

<g:plusone href="http://www.example.com/blog"></g:plusone>

No. The button sizes are fixed.

The +1 button and annotations are available in 40 languages.

+1 is a public action, so you should add the button only to public, crawlable pages on your site. Once you add the button, Google may crawl or recrawl the page, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click.

Buzz buttons are used for starting conversations about interesting web content ("Hey guys, what do you think about this news story?"). +1 buttons recommend web content to people in the context of search results ("Peng +1’d this page"), and +1's from social connections can help improve the relevance of the results you see in Google Search. You can use the +1 button, or the Buzz button, or both—pick what’s right for your content.

The +1 button code requires a script from Google's servers. You can include this script using either http:// or https://, like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

If your web page uses https://, some browsers and verification tools will show an error when any assets on the page are called via http://. If your site serves pages via https://, make sure that the +1 button code on those pages also uses https://. (In fact, it's fine to use https:// in the button code for all pages, even if they are only served via http://.)

Google+ supports the following browsers:

• Windows: Chrome, Firefox 3.6 and up, Internet Explorer 8 and up
• Linux : Chrome, Firefox 3.6 and up
• Mac: Chrome, Firefox 3.6 and up, Safari 4 and up

Yes! We've added support for iOS 4.0+ and Android 2.1+, so once you add the +1 button code to your site, the button will be automatically visible on pages viewed using these browsers.

No, the +1 button is not yet supported for mobile search results.

Currently, we don't support inline annotations in mobile browsers.

If your mobile and desktop sites use the same URL, the +1's will be counted together. Otherwise, the +1 counts will be separate. Google recommends that you use rel="canonical" to indicate your preferred version of each page. More information about +1 and canonicalization. (If for some reason you can't use rel="canonical", you can use Advanced Options on the +1 button configurator to edit the button code to specify the URL you want +1'd when the user clicks the button.)

You don’t need to do anything to enable sharing to Google+ from the +1 buttons on your site. We've updated the +1 button code so that users with a Google+ account can share your content on Google+ just by clicking the +1 button and then clicking Share on Google+.

Users can add comments, pick the right circles, and share to the Stream on Google+, starting new conversations about your content.

Note: When someone shares your content to Google+, we'll display the URL of your page in the post. If your page isn't yet public, make sure to share it with only a limited number of people. Otherwise, your staging server URL will be visible on Google+.

Google attempts to find the most useful and descriptive +snippet to display. If you have marked up your content rich snippets using the schema.org vocabulary, Google+ will use the name, image, and description properties from the generic Thing type.

Alternatively, Google+ (though not Google Web Search) can use Open Graph metadata to create the +snippet. It can also use the contents of title and meta description tags.

More information about customizing the site description.

+1 button icons can render at four heights: small (15px), medium (20px), standard (24px), and tall (60px). The small, medium, and standard icons can render with or without a total count of +1's. The tall icon always includes a total count of +1's. For more information, see Button sizes .

The Language dropdown controls the language of the button itself.