After opening the doors of its upcoming social network Google+ to businesses, search giant Google is now rolling out a new feature to help Google+ members grow their audiences: badges.
Google+ badge technical lead Todd Volkert said the badge helps connect one's website and Google+ page to make it easier for an audience to follow one online.
"The Google+ badge helps you grow your audience on Google+ and show more recommendations in Google search by letting people add you to their circles and +1 your page, all without leaving your site," Volkert said in a blog post.
He said the badge makes it easier for people to subscribe to one's posts, get more personal recommendations around the web by connecting +1’s for your website with +1’s on your Google+ page, and qualify for Google+ Direct Connect, which lets people type +your_site_name on Google search and automatically start following your page.
A separate article on PC Magazine compared the badge to Facebook's "like," where the Facebook feature indicates which of one's friends "like" a particular page.
In Google+'s case, PC Mag said the Google+ badge seems to indicate icons of people who recently gave a “+1" to the site, recommending it to their friends.
Also, it said the badges give users the option to add a site to a user’s Circles, as well as show how many people have given the site Google’s equivalent of a thumbs up.
To get the badges, users need to sign up for the Google Platform Preview, which allows them to preview the latest updates to the Google+ platform before they are released to the general public.
But the new badges are different than the Google News Badges, another social experiment Google served up last July.
"Those badges reward users for reading Google News stories on various topics, which can either be gloated over privately or shared with the world," it noted. — TJD, GMA News
Source: gmanews.tv
