How to Add Google +1 to your website

Google has started rolling out it’s Plus one button for webmasters just following yesterday’s release of the Twitter follow button that you can embed in your website. To create a custom +1 button you have to first visit here. Once you arrive at the website you are able to select one of 4 button sizes, and select your language (Only US English works).

You can see a live preview on the right side on how the button will look on your website. The 4 button sizes are 15px, 20px,24px and 60px.

Advanced +1 Button Options

The advanced options have a number of default settings the first one is you have to include the count unless you change code, and the default setting for parse is on load, which you can change to explicit for performance reasons. The JavaScript call back function may accept a JSON object will be in the form {“href”: “http://www.example.com/”, “state”: “on”}. For more details on the advanced options visit here.

How to Tag Plus One Clicks with Google Analytics

One smart way to get data on clicks before Google rolls out an official solution is to check out Yoast who has created a simple guide on Tracking Google +1 button as an event in Google Analytics. I’ve just added it to this site and should hopefully start gathering data soon.

Google Plus One for Your Website Dashboard

Once you have added the URL that you wish to assign the +1 toward you can cut and paste the code into your website. The first part of the code goes into after you <HEAD> tag but before the closing </BODY> tag on your website. The second part of the code specifies where you wish the button to render, and you can place the button in more than one location. That’s it all you have to do if you want to add the Google +1 button to your website, you can see on the middle of the right side of this blog we have added a button, so if you found the post useful please click +1.

Do all my pages need to have a rel=”canonical” tag?
No, though we recommend it, Google will next look for the rel=”canonical” tag on the page. If that isn’t found, Google will use the document.location.href. This final value can sometimes be misleading because of state variables often kept in the URL. So they advise using a rel=”canonical” tag can help you specify the exact URL you want +1

Will the +1 work on a private URL?
No, the +1 button won’t work. +1′s only work for public URLs.