Google Adds +1 Feature to Search Results

In competition with Facebook, the search engine is increasingly integrating social networking features into its products.

With the battle heating up between the two internet giants, Google launched its Facebook-style +1 feature Wednesday. The button appears next to search results and allows users to recommend pages to their networks of contacts, much like Facebook’s “Like” button. For the feature to work, users have to create a Google profile. Then their contacts, gathered through existing Google products like Gmail, see their +1’s. Google is striving to maintain its status as the primary gateway through which people access the internet, as Facebook’s Like feature is increasingly used to steer users toward content. For now, the +1 button will not influence how Google ranks search results, but the company has not ruled out factoring it into its search algorithm.