Difference Between Google Plus One and Facebook Like

Google Plus One vs Facebook Like | Google +1 vs FB ‘like’

Those who are regular surfers know how popular social plugin called Facebook like is and how every website is competing with each other to brag about the likes it has been getting and how far ahead it is from its competitors. In fact, this social plugin has become an important criterion is judging a website’s popularity. When one is logged on to his Facebook account and he clicks on this button, he actually spreads the news through members he knows as this information about the webpage splashes on his home page on Facebook. Sensing the pulse of the social community, Google, the search engine behemoth has recently launched a similar plugin called Plus One (+1) which operates in much the same way as Facebook like. However, there are many differences in these two Plugins that will be discussed in this article.

When a person likes a website through his Facebook account, this information is shared to all his acquaintances who are on Facebook. On its part, Facebook also maintains a record of how many people like a website in this manner. Suppose your friend likes a recipe and without his doing anything (except of course pushing the like button), his preference gets displayed in the home page of all his friends on Facebook. Coming from your friend, you are more likely to visit the website than if you get to know about it from an unknown person.

Now it seems that Google has got inspired with the concept of recommendation but the real purpose of Google might be different than that of Facebook. It may be too early to surmise but my guess is that Google are going to keep track of sites liked by Google account holders and use it in future when this plugin becomes more popular. It could even use +1 to give rankings to websites based upon how many +1 the site has got. As of today, +1 is being used by very few people but one never knows how things might shape up in near future.

Another difference between Facebook like and Google Plus One is that while one share the like with his friends on Facebook, Google +1 is more like recommending a page. One thing in favor of Google is the fact that it is the largest search engine and this is an incentive in itself for all site owners to integrate +1 on their sites to let Google know how many people like the content on their sites. It is a fact that Google accounts for a majority of incoming traffic on any site, and in this regard, Facebook is a distant second with only 10% traffic being generated through this giant social networking site (which is an achievement in itself though). Though people may argue about the importance of social networking for search, but today everyone agrees that liking and tweeting are giving a tough competition to hyperlinks that are placed deliberately to get traffic on the web.

The very fact that even advertisements are now placing Facebook like and Google Plus one alongside indicates more and more use of this social plugin in future. Google has made previous attempts to become more social through Google Buzz that failed miserably. Google are not providing any incentive to website owners to place +1 on their pages but it is clear that most of the establishments are lining up to have this social plugin in the hope that it would pep up their page ranking in the eyes of the search engine giant. It is to be seen how far Google can go in its endeavor but already one can see both Google +1 and Facebook like placed on many websites.