• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 2, 2011

A day after Twitter debuted its answer to Facebook's "like" button, Google has gone and recast its +1 sharing button as the perfect addition to any Web site. "Google's hoping that +1's integration in search results will make it an attractive option to publishers, which stand to gain more traffic when their visitors start '+1ing' content," writes Mashable.

As Google put it, "The next time your connections are searching, they could see your +1's directly in their search results." Bigger picture, "Getting a sturdier footing in the world of social networking is something Google has really focused on in recent months," Computerworld notes. "It seems that Google is digging its way out of a social networking hole that [ex-CEO Eric] Schmidt now admits putting the company into."

First debuted in March, Google's +1 button now competes with similar sharing buttons offered by Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and LinkedIn, to name a few. "The buttons are part of an attempt by companies to stake out their claim in the social-networking sphere and get ordinary Web surfers to be more engaged with their products," explains The Wall Street Journal. "The tools also let companies collect information about what websites people are visiting."

"For now though," Mashable adds, "+1 remains an experimental feature that Google search users need to opt in to."Experiment or not, Google has partnered with long list of publisher and retailer sites to carry +1, including, Bloomberg, Best Buy, The Huffington Post, Nordstrom, Reuters, Rotten Tomatoes, and The Washington Post.