by samGoogle Plus 1s are Google’s answer to the Facebook like button. Just like the Like button, you add the Plus 1 button to your pages on your site, and when someone ‘Plus 1s’ your page, it gets added to their Google profile. When people you’re connected to on your Google account +1 something when you see that specific link or page, their name will appear next to it, saying “Joe blogs +1ed this.”
The idea is that it will influence what websites you visit depending on what your peers recommend using +1s. With the impending launch of Google Plus, it is going to be part of Google’s social media arsenal. Google has already stated that it is going to be part of their bigger plans for internet marketing and influencer SEO.
One of the things that they have already announced is that as pages get +1ed, it is going to influence their search rankings. After this announcement, there has been the emergence of a few companies that claim to be selling +1s. Simply pay X amount, and they will give you X amount of +1s on the page of your choice. The plan is that as the +1s influence search rankings, they already have a head start with thousands of +1s.
Paying for these +1s is pretty unethical and falls into the same category as using some of those blacklisted SEO techniques; it goes against the whole social search idea. Google hasn’t made any announcements on how they would combat this, but it is highly likely that any Google accounts used by this means to artificially bump website rankings will be blacklisted, and their +1s will have no effect on search rankings.
This seems like the most likely and best option. At the moment, +1s are mostly evident on Google searches, next to search results. But as it is going to be heavily integrated into Google Plus, as Plus grows, +1s are going to become more and more popular and influential.