Though Google continues to insist that there’s no rivalry between itself and Facebook, there’s no doubt that they’re engaged in serious competition with each other to land the largest fish in the advertising pond.

There has been a lot of speculation over the way Google has handled itself with the web becoming ever more social by the day, with many suggesting that Google doesn’t have the capacity to handle itself and translate its services to the social searcher.

Enter Google +1, a radical overhaul which allows searchers to recommend search results to their friends, giving a service that could potentially change people’s rankings based on the inds of sites they like and frequently visit.

A new, social way of searching? Search ads for Google are its primary source of revenue – an astonishing $30billion annually – so it’s crucial they keep hold of their key advertisers and convince them that the grass isn’t greener over the Facebook fence. +1 appears to be similar to the ‘Like’ feature present on Facebook, but is it really a service that searchers will find appealing? Don’t people use search engines to find what they need as quickly as possible? And how will it affect search engine optimisation?

Part of the problem is that a lot of people are finding what they need via referrals from Facebook, negating the need to go on Google at all. It’s something that Google needs to nip in the bud as soon as possible, to show that their search platform is still the king of finding relevant content as quickly as possible.

Google’s +1 page says: ‘Sometimes it’s easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when someone you know already found it. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results.

‘The next time you’re trying to remember that bed and breakfast your buddy was raving about, or find a great charity to support, a +1 could help you out. Just make sure you’re signed in to your Google Account.’

We’ll be sure to sign into our Google accounts and let you know what we think in the coming weeks…

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