Report: Google's +1 Buttons Gain Wider Distribution, Facebook Still Dominant

Frederic Lardinois

Jul 8, 2011 — 1 min read

In some corners of the Internet, the battle between Google’s +1 buttons and Facebook’s and Twitter’s equivalent sharing tools has already been decided. According to Enterprise SEO company Brightedge, however, all of these tools still have a lot of room to grow when it comes to distribution on the top 10,000 websites. Google’s buttons are currently only in use on 4.5% of these sites, while Facebook’s Like button and box are being used by 10.8% and 6.1% of these sites respectively.

A +1 Surge

This obviously represents a major surge for Google’s +1 buttons, which is even more remarkable given that these buttons currently don’t actually do much. When users click on these widgets, the action is only reflected on their Google profiles and sometimes appear in other users’ search results. The fact that so many sites are now adopting this button, though, shows how much confidence most of these businesses have in Google’s ability to turn these buttons into something useful for them, both for SEO purposes as well as for social sharing.

Twitter’s Share and Instant Follow widgets lag behind Google, though they are also still quite new and are also growing quickly.

Most Sites Still Don’t Leverage Sharing Buttons

Overall, though, these numbers are also a good reminder that most brands are still not leveraging the power of social sharing. Facebook’s Like box may be dominant in comparison to the other buttons, but even the most ubiquitous of sharing widgets is only being used by about 11% of the Web’s 10,000 largest sites.

You can download the full report here.

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