Google is taking its +1 feature beyond search results and launching a button that publishers can include on their own websites.
The button, which debuted in March in Google search, will compete with the likes of the already ubiquitous sharing buttons offered by Facebook and Twitter (and more recently Tumblr and LinkedIn) for web page real estate.
The +1 button will begin appearing Wednesday on a number of select publishers, including Mashable (it should be live here between 1-2 p.m. ET), though the code is now freely available to anyone.
As with most other sharing buttons, setting up the +1 button on your website is straightforward. Google has created a simple tool that lets you choose from a number of sizes and styles, and then provides the appropriate JavaScript code that you can cut and paste into your site.
Google’s hoping that +1’s integration in search results will make it an attractive option to publishers, which stand to gain more traffic when their visitors start “+1ing” content. Google articulates this benefit in a blog post: “The next time your connections are searching, they could see your +1’s directly in their search results.”