According to Google’s official statement, their goal “is to get you the most relevant results as quickly as possible. But relevance is about relationships as well as words on webpages”. The reason why social interactions was made available in search a few months ago. Now, “we’re taking that a step further, enabling you to share recommendations with the world right in Google’s search results. It’s called +1—the digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool.” To recommend something, all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful. These +1’s will then start appearing in Google’s search results”.

Is this a good thing? Personally, I’m afraid this system could be abused and misused. And I’m sharing the same feeling with a lot of people in the search marketing world. A good article from SEOmoz discussed the possible effects of this new Google feature.

Would I use it? Maybe, but to the least extent I would say. How about you?