The purpose of Google’s +1 button is to make it easier to connect with people you trust online, whilst enabling the users who love a site’s content to recommend it quickly and easily. With Google’s +1 a Google user is essentially declaring their stamp of approval, publicly, and of course web users are far more likely to pay attention to a friend’s recommendation than anyone else’s.

But when it comes to managing a website, what is the point of implementing a feature like this if you can’t measure its effectiveness as this is normally the case? Thankfully, Google have come up with the answer to this in their latest announcement.

First stop: Google Webmaster Tools. This will show you how the +1 button is affecting the traffic heading to your pages. The Search Impact Report will give you an idea of how +1’s affect your organic search traffic, you will be able to find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalised recommendations are helping your content to stand out. This can be done easily by simply comparing clicks and impressions in order to acquire a meaningful comparison.

The Activity Report shows you how many times your pages have been +1’d, from both buttons on your site and on other pages whilst the Audience Report will show geographic and demographic information about the Google users who have +1’d your pages. In the interest of privacy, Google will only be showing details when a significant number of users have +1’d pages from your site.

The Social Engagement Report enables you to see how the site behaviour alters in relation to visits that have come via clicks on +1 buttons – or other social actions. This will enable you to determine factors such as whether people who +1 your pages during a visit are likely to spend more time on your site than others.

The Social Actions Report will let you track the number of social actions (i.e. +1’s, tweets etc) whilst the Social Pages Report enables you to compare the pages on your site in order to see which are driving the highest number of social actions.

By using Social Plugin Tracking in Google Analytics you can also see how users share your content using other buttons besides the +1. After configuring the JavaScript for Analytics, the Social Engagement reports help you compare the various types of sharing actions that occur on your pages.

Despite this vast selection of information, remember that social reporting is really only just getting started, as people continue to find new ways to interact across the web.

If you are interested in implementing the +1 button and boosting traffic to your site, get in touch with OMG Search and find out how we are able to assist you.