Let’s say you do a search for Acoustic Guitar Pickups, and the search results give you the first 10 results. Now, are you going to click +1 here? Why would you, you have not seen the site yet. So, let’s say you go to the first result and it is perfect match for what you needed. Will you go back and click the +1? Probably not. And if you went to a page and it was a bad match, you would go back and check out another listing, but once again, you would not have a reason to click the +1.

Until +1 is on an actual page it is really not very helpful.

Being on the search results page it is almost guaranteed that most the clicks on the +1 icon will be people trying to game their own results. This will only help once Google adds the +1 to their signals to rank pages, which is not in place yet.

So, is +1 useless as it stands right now?

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Publishers can choose to use subscriptions, metered access, freemium and sinlge articles.

The system is supposed to streamline the process by keeping up with all the necessary components from login, authentication through the checkout process via Google Checkout.

This looks very interesting and I tried to signup. However the signup is currently not working and just cycles through to a websearch form.

Link : Official Google Blog : One Pass Micropayment

Here is the video from Google explaining the system.

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URL:  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/port-your-existi…

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One thing I have noticed is that you can not have Google Instant turned on and set your default setting to display more than 10 search results at one time. I have had mine set to 100 search results for as long as I can remember. The settings page will let you select 100, but when you turn on Instant, the page will only show 10.

Google Instant does not really impact most of my searches since I typically do not load the Google home page to search. I do most of my” googling”  from the address bar within Chrome. And it will be interesting to see if they change this functionality.

It will also be interesting to see how it changes the search terms that people use. There are already a lot of conversations about Google Instant killing SEO.  I certainly think it has the capability of changing SEO dramatically, but, as long as there are search engines, there will be ways to optimize for them.

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They are not necessarily in any particular order.

1. TextPad
2. Firefox with FireBug extension.
3. Chrome Browser
4. Skype
5. Google Talk
6. Google Reader
7. Twitter
8. Facebook
9. WordPress
10. Email (Gmail)

As an extra mention, most of these are used on my desktop and my iPhone. I am still doing 99.9% of my work on an HP Mini 311 Verizon Netbook, which is simply amazing.

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As an extra incentive to try the feature they are asking people to Tweet about it….

“And if you’ve customized your look with a fun personal photo we’d love to see what your new homepage looks like. Tweet a picture of your page with the hashtag #myGooglepage and share it with us!” Source : Official Google Blog

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I was even more surprised to receive a payment this morning that closed out my account. I am not sure that I had ever received a payment from YPN before, but I knew I had a little income left in the account, below the minimum payout.

So I must say Yahoo gets my respect for paying out on accounts that did not reach the minimum!

Thanks Yahoo for doing the right thing.

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The one thing I can not grasp is why Google is choosing to keep the control so tight. After all these years the one thing you could count on with Google was some options. And we all know, if it can be done, Google can do it.

Suggestions:

• Google Buzz in the inbox. Give us some options. Start with, yes or no, and branch out from there. If yes, let us set the update interval to some extent. Buzz in Gmail is not the issue, just the inbox flow.
• Google Buzz and Google Reader integration. Once again, yes or no would be nice. My Reader was just about perfect for me, now, it is a mess.
• Bump interval. Why not let us set this to a number of comments before a post is bumped? Maybe a combination, either X number of comments, or an elapsed time will bump it.
• Mute fade. I just don’t think the Web 2.0 feature is worth the delay. I know I muted it, just let it go. Of course, an option here would be nice for those who like it.
• Contacts. Wow, what a mess this is. Google Buzz has made trash out of my contacts. I have not investigated this much, but I know I was shocked when I realized Buzz was doing a number on my nice clean list.
• How about a favorites button or some mechanism to flag something for later review? You are the ones who got us used to this in Gmail and Reader!

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Google is making another run at Social Networking and using Gmail to do it this time. After their previous attempts this is probably their final shot at getting some traction with social networking, if they miss here, they should just forget about it. At first glance it appears that they acknowledge Twitter and Flickr but they are not going to help anyone lean towards Facebook.

Google Wave did not get it done, Orkut, Zingku, or how about Dodgeball?

As usual they are diving in with API support at Google Code.

I will not pass judgement until I have some real time to invest in Google Buzz, but looking over the API, it looks like they realize the importance of connectivity to other systems and keeping the system as open as possible.

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