Google Plus One Hurting Rankings Or Helping Rankings?

Jul 26, 2011 - 8:29 am 15 by

Google Plus SlowWe know that Google has said that plus ones can have a positive impact on your rankings but we also know site speed can have a negative impact on rankings.

A WebmasterWorld thread has reports of webmasters pulling the Google Plus One button from their sites because they have been one more element to slow down the page load time of their pages.

One webmaster said:

It was a real pain to add the +1 button and make it fit in layout and get along the other buttons alignment. But what I noticed once I finished spread it all over my site is a horrible slow down in page load.

All page loads fast, but the +1 button is the last one in loading and while it does leaves the page like frozen until it does completely. For instance the main navigation menu (pure css) won't show subitems until the +1 button finally appears.

Truth be told, there are ways to speed up the buttons through some tricks. Michael Butler at RustyBrick (my company) posted an article named JavaScript Hover Effects to Speed Up Page Load Time. Basically, you do not load the buttons until a user places their mouse over the button. Before the user does that, the button is simply an image.

One webmaster claimed that his rankings slipped after adding the plus one button and then shortly after removing it, the rankings came back. Of course, there can be other reasons and factors, but this is what he said:

Just thought I'd add that about 10 days after posting that I removed the +1 buttons from the news articles and within 48hrs the traffic to the news section was back to normal levels (up to about 150/200 uniques a day). Two note: 1) adding +1 was the only change I had made to the news section in months and 2) during all that time, traffic to other parts of the site always remained consistent.

The last time we covered a topic like this was with the Facebook like button where a Googler said it will have no impact on your rankings.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Hours after I posted this, Google announced a faster Google Plus One button. Clearly this post had nothing to do with them releasing it, I am sure it was in development for a while.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
Google Core Update Rumbling, Manual Actions FAQs, Core Web Vitals Updates, AI, Bing, Ads & More - YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 18, 2024

Mar 18, 2024 - 4:00 pm
Google Updates

Google Urges Patience As The March 2024 Core Update Continues To Rollout

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google

Official: Google Replaces Perspective Filter With Forums Filter

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Now Offers Additional Review After Appeal Is Denied

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

EU Searchers Complaining About Google Maps Features Changes Related To DMA

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:21 am
Google

Google Showing Fewer Sitelinks Within Search

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Feet Burners