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Google To Build +1 Crowdsourcing Tool

Crowd-of-People

Jason Simon, INK creative director, told Search Marketing Daily the trend toward crowdsourcing continues to pick up among fellow ad agencies as a tool to gain consumer support. His company, however, does not offer the option today -- but Google will.

INK provides crowdsourcing services when it comes to collecting data to guide decisions, but not for creative pieces such as when a company produces a logo and makes it available to millions to view. Those millions vote on the creative piece. Each vote prequalifies an idea that either might or might not work.

This trend could lend credence to why Google confirmed to Wired that it will build a crowdsourcing tool into the +1 social button that helps fight spam and reorders search query results.

Reording search results means the +1 button would have an impact on the ranking algorithm, which folks like Rand Fishkin began to confirm when the button first launched. The +1 sharing button debuted in March "with little incentive for Web surfers to click on it." The biggest influence that button had was with recommendations and references to friends. These results would appear on the search engine next to query results. That influence will change.

Social buttons such as Google +1, along with the Facebook "Like," are likely to contribute to what Eli Pariser calls an "algorithmic editing of the Web." Some call this personalized search. Pariser said in a presentation to TED attendees in Long Beach, Calif. in February 2011 that without consulting him, Facebook would edit out posts from his liberal friends after noticing that he clicked on his conservative friends' posts more.

Google also does this. Two people can search for something at the very same time, and based on historic searches and clicks, both would have different search results. Google looks at about 57 signals, even for searchers who are logged out -- from the type of computer to browser to location. News portals such as Yahoo do it, too. Historic clicks and searches contribute to content served up in the future.

1 comment about "Google To Build +1 Crowdsourcing Tool".
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  1. Chris Nielsen from Domain Incubation, October 2, 2011 at 1:33 p.m.

    The more tools we have to SPAM search engine results, the better!

    I can hardly wait until the aspect of keyword relevance is dropped in favor of backlinks and +. Now where is that clickbot software I was looking for...?

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