Google+1 Follows Facebook for Social Sharing of Search Results

iTechWhiz (April 02, 2011) - Google +1 is long awaited social sharing feature, launched on March 30, 2011 by the world largest search engine. It can be best understood as Google version of Facebook 'Like' button, mingling social networking into search engine.

The good news is the service is easy. Users literally just click the +1 when they like a search result for a car, restaurant or ads to recommend these products to users. No mess, no fuss. Here is the official description of Google +1:

The +1 button is shorthand for 'this is pretty cool' or 'you should check this out'. Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1 can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

The bad news is that users who want to generate +1s need a Google Profile, the ad-hoc social graph-builder Google set up two years ago to begin applying social services to its products. This requires Google users to leave more information about themselves, as they do on Facebook, where profiles users enter their name, work info if they prefer, interests and links.

So profile is what with which Google Social Search links users to their friends, surfacing content created or shared by Google linked Gmail and Google Chat, Twitter and Quora.

However, interestingly Google has excludes Facebook from the feature, which is world biggest social network and largest online advertisement competitor to Google Adsense. It must be remembered that according to Alexa Ranking, Facebook is world second highest traffic website after Google, with a neck to neck competition between the both.

Facebook and Microsoft Bing joins hands on other side

Microsoft Bing has also integrated social networking its search engine by indexing Twitter and Facebook updates. Bing News will now display twitter updates alongside so that users can see and read about the latest social networking trends on the topic searched.

Users will have the ability to tweet or like any news listed in Bing News search. A Liked Results feature which is coming with Bing will soon take over Facebook’s news results as Bing has already partnered with Facebook to provide search results using its system inside Facebook.

Currently available only in the United States, Bing has not provided any information relating to when it will release this service worldwide. But its is estimated that European users can expect this feature by the end of this year.