Around the middle of Janurary, Google rolled out “Search Plus Your World” (hereon called SPYW), which means that logged-in users will get their organic search results augmented with socially shared content and markup, ostensibly from Google+. Danny Sullivan already wrote up two pieces about that (Google’s Results Get More Personal & Real-Life Examples of How Search Plus Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy), which cover the changes brilliantly, so I suggest reading those, before carrying on.

In case you didn’t read them though, the important points are that when you’re logged in, you’ll see:

• Normal web listings, as they would normally be
• Normal listings pushed up or down, by your search history, and/or social connections
• Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos, and
• Private or “Limited” Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you

There’s a bigger picture here though, and to see it we have to move beyond what Google+ is, and on to what it represents, bearing in mind Larry Page’s recent statement:

This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else.

That sounds like Larry trying to channel a bit of the late Steve Jobs. A unified, beautiful product, and if you don’t like it, get out.

The Pledge

In magic, every trick has three parts: the pledge, the turn and the prestige. In the pledge, you’re shown something ordinary, like a deck of cards or a book. You’re asked to inspect it, to check it’s real. The point is of course, whatever is going on is so subtle that you won’t see it, even when looking. In the turn, the magician takes back the item and makes it do something extraordinary. A card gets shuffled in the pack, and the magician blindfolded. The book is shredded and the person put in another room. The places are set for something amazing to happen.

And then we get the prestige: the card is inside the bottom of your shoe, or the magician has had someone else write down a word, and it’s the one you chose. The part where everything defys the laws of nature and is put back together.

So what’s Google’s Pledge? Well, it’s to build a search engine. Lots of people were doing it back when they started. But they did a good job, and removed the clutter, and build a good product and refined it and many years later, here we are. They’ve monetised it well, and become a verb and done all the things that aspiring Valley companies aim to do.

The clever part though, was not stepping on too many toes along the way. By (pretty much) staying a search engine (although what they searched got bigger), Google quietly trundled along.

The Turn

And then Google got weird. Forays in to social, sponsoring of projects that had no real basis in searching for things. Gmail, a great product for email, but bearing no real relationship to search arrived. And the Android came along. Again, an interesting product, with no relationship to search. And most recently, Google+.

With all these projects, it looks like Google’s trying to compete with dominant players in an important space – with Gmail it was Hotmail and Yahoo, in the case of Android, Apple (and iOS specifically), and with Google+, obviously the target is Facebook.

But here’s the thing, saying that they’re trying to compete with those services misses the point. In waiting for the prestige, people keep forgetting that Google swapped the order of the trick around. But the trick takes so long to pull off, everyone forgot that they were told what would happen.

The Prestige

You can actually see what the prestige will be, over on Google’s About page…

Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful

Or consider the quote given to The Guardian

Our goal with search has always been to provide the most relevant results possible. That’s why for years we’ve been working on social search features to help you find the most relevant information from your social connections no matter what site it’s on. Search plus Your World doesn’t change who has access to content, it simply helps people rediscover information they already have access to. We’ve taken special care with our new features to provide robust security protections, transparency and control for our users.

Google doesn’t care about social, or mapping, or your inbox, or even search really. Google cares about information; specifically storing it and holding it in a format that’s useful, so when you go to look for something they’ve got the answer, and ads to show you alongside it.

The Future

Google will continue to expand in to everything. They’ll push new technologies in every sector, so as they take off, it’ll fund their insatiable appetite for information. They’re working on driverless cars which will be vastly safer and more environmentally friendly. And of course, they’ll be able to suggest restaurants to you on the journey, and know your travel patterns and be able to advertise to you better because of it.

Google aims to be the Dyson of information, sucking everything in and, when you need them, giving the perfect advert back. A profitable way to run a search engine, certainly, but the best one? I’ll let you decide that for yourself.

What is Pinterest?

Put simply, it’s the hottest new thing in social media. Pinterest, despite launching little over a year ago and still available by invitation only, has recently seen a phenomenal growth in popularity and usage; according to Quantcast, in March last year approximately 50,000 people in the US were signed up whereas in October that same year the figure was 600,000 and showed no sign of slowing.

The unique idea behind this social networking site is that users share images, rather than text, making the whole thing a very visual experience. You can quickly and easily share images from all over the Internet and categorise them by pinning them onto boards (think ‘albums’). It’s also a great way of encouraging consumers to make a note of products that they like so that they return later to buy them – whereas they might otherwise forget about that gorgeous lampshade you’re selling, with Pinterest they can pin it to one of their boards and see a visual reminder of it every time they log in. Plus, with no privacy options currently in place absolutely everything that is ‘pinned’ is then visible to the entire community – with a followed link back to the original web page it was found on – so you may find that just one pin leads to numerous sales.

Inspiration for creating Pinterest boards for your Company

Who uses it?

The majority of Pinterest users are female and, of course, drawn to great imagery. Top categories include bridal, home decor, hobbies and food. A quick flick through the most popular images will show you that users are drawn to anything stylish and unique in design.

It’s not just the general public using Pinterest though; from Whole Foods to Southwest Airlines a cross-section of companies are jumping on the bandwagon and promoting not only their products but also their brand as a whole. Southwest Airlines for example have boards such as Destinations (photos of places they’d like to visit), Vintage (old black-and-white photos of airports and aeroplanes) and Travel Style (comfortable, stylish travel wear). It’s a way of giving the brand a bit more personality and interacting with the customers in a way that’s friendlier and more sociable than pushy advertising. Plus the profile also links directly to the website so users inspired by the airline’s nostalgic or breathtaking imagery are but a click away from a site where they can buy their own holiday abroad.

Top 6 Tips for Companies on Pinterest

1. Pin Images and Videos

It sounds obvious, but the best way to generate interest in your brand on Pinterest is to upload as much content as possible. The more images that you have, the more often your profile will be found and viewed. Pinterest also allows video content and with fewer videos than images on the site this stands a good chance of being seen regularly, so if you have any great footage – educational tips, funny adverts, etc. – be sure to get it on there.

2. Install the Pin It Button

The ‘Pin It’ button works much like a Facebook ‘like’ or Twitter ‘tweet’ button. Get the html code from the website and add it to all of your products, to encourage your visitors to share the images that they like without even having to be on the Pinterest website.

3. Be Creative

However, avoid thinking of Pinterest as purely an advertising space. Board upon board of your own products is unlikely to get many users repinning – which shares the image and the link on their profile – so intersperse your own images with other high-quality and relevant pictures. Do you sell lighting for example? Try creating a board with ‘colourful lights’ and mix images of your coloured light-bulbs with eye-catching and artistic photos of fairy lights or disco lighting. This lets users see both the effect of coloured lighting and then, if they are interested (which most likely they are if they clicked on your board in the first place), the products that will let them recreate it at home.

4. Add Prices

A quick but highly-beneficial tip is to write the price of products that you are pinning in the description. This will automatically add a little price tag to the image and cause it to show up in the Gifts category which is exactly where people will be looking if they intend to spend money!

5. Be Social

Pinterest is generally organised by ‘most recent first’ so once you’ve created your boards they’re not going to keep generating interest for very long. The key to making your venture into Pinterest a successful one is to interact with your target audience, just as you would on another social networking site such as Facebook.

Repin other users’ images onto your boards where relevant – they’ll receive a notification and will very likely browse through the rest of your board where their image has been shared. For best effect, do a little research and focus your efforts – a user is more likely to buy a chair from you for example if they have just posted a board entitled ‘Chairs I’d Love to Buy’. You can search boards as well as image titles. Don’t forget to make use of the commenting feature or to follow users either to incite them to follow you back.

6. Run Competitions

Pinterest works best when users are promoting your images, not you. Try running a competition where entry requires users to pin their favourite items from your website onto a board, or to repin images that you have already posted.

Overall, Pinterest is proving to be a very popular and extremely fast-growing new website that, thanks to its unique set-up, opens up a whole new range of possibilities and allows you to promote your brand in ways that you may never have tried before. It may just be another passing craze or, who knows, perhaps it will be the next Twitter. Either way, right now it’s an excellent platform and I would encourage any and all companies to jump on the bandwagon quickly to take advantage of the fact that right now there is very little business competition on there at all!

Check out these example boards that we have put together

The internet is alive with news of the SOPA & PIPA related blackout. This is a quick run down the list of key terms and players.

The blackout is due to run from 5:00 AM GMT to 5:00 AM GMT, Wednesday 18^th to Thursday 19^th January, a full 24 hours.

SOPA

The Stop Online Piracy Act is a ridiculous piece of legally dubious waffle that is either unenforceably vague, or would utterly destroy huge swathes of the internet. It is sites such as Wikipedia and reddit that stand to suffer most from the act, as it could cause enormous sections of their user-generated content to become unlawful overnight.

Image by Christopher Dombres under a Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

It is currently in a great amount of trouble, as it has been delayed until some “outstanding concerns” can be, uh, remedied. It ain’t dead yet, though!

The special interests and very special senators that support the bill are listed here.

PIPA

PIPA, or the Protect Internet Privacy Act, is a similar law going through the Senate. Interestingly, it is intended to especially strongly target sites originating from outside the U.S. This is clearly supposed to target chancers like the Swedish “Pirate Bay” mob, but makes America appear embarrassingly insular and protectionist online, in a way that no other fully democratic nation is.

PIPA is still very much alive.

Wikipedia

Obviously, Wikipedia is a major player here, and probably the most important – not everyone knows who boingboing.net or reddit are (yes, even now), and we can get amusing photoshops elsewhere if we really do desperately need them. Wikipedia, however, is a vast repository of information that many have come to rely on.

Cory Doctorow

Boingboing.net is home to the apparently visionary author Cory Doctorow, who has predicted events very similar to these (albeit enacted in “real life”) in parts of his insightful novel and polemic, Makers, where real life user-generated contents starts to be targeted by old, outdated institutions that feel threatened.

In the book, the main enemy is Disney; in real life, it appears as though it’s the U.S. government itself.

Other Major Players

Some of the biggest guns, other than Wikipedia, are boingboing.net, Mozilla, reddit and the Cheezburger network. There are also gamer networks, mobilised in part by early and angry coverage throughout mainstream gamer news outlets such as escapistmagazine.com, including Destructoid, Good Old Games and indie game smash hit Minecraft, as well as political sites and comic strips.

There is no limit to getting involved, and the number of “unfiltered” or unconfirmed participants has hit 1800. If you are interested, you can get involved here.

Implications

An online “strike” of this size and on this scale has never been seen before. It could further entrench the U.S. government, through a desire to avoid setting a precedent, it could cause them to fold like a house of cards, we’ll have to wait and see.

If websites do have the power to influence government policy through acts like this, well, I’m glad it was Wikipedia who did it first. I’m doubly glad it was over a cause as worthy as this.

I can’t help but be a little worried about who else could start throwing their weight around, though…

What a week this has been in search! On Tuesday Google changed the rules in a big way and this time it could have a significant impact on search results. Don’t be alarmed its unlikely to affect your results over night so there is time to embrace the changes that are needed but change is definitely necessary unless you want to risk getting left behind.

Google are constantly updating their algorithm which is why they continue to be the most popular search engine by a country mile. But this week they took a step that forces those serious about the success of their website to sit up and listen – by engaging with Google+.

Why? In simple terms Google rolled out “Search, Plus Your World” which personalises search results like never before. In effect Google are looking at social graphs as well as link graphs to determine what results are displayed and they are taking the social indicators primarily from Google+.

What does Search, Plus Your World look like?

Google+, Twitter or Facebook – too many platforms?

The majority of Google+’s now 60M users are at the more tech savvy end of the user spectrum, the early adopters and those who are already heavily engaged in social media. I have to admit that when Google+ came along my initial feeling was that I didn’t need another social media time suck when I can get what I need from Facebook for friends and family and Twitter for business.

Google+ does seem to have taken the best bits of our favourite social media platforms and mashed them together to produce something that is quite slick, clean and very user friendly. But as its trying to do what Facebook and Twitter do so will those embedded in those systems jump ship or take on an extra platform? We’ll have to wait and see.

The beauty of Google+ is that you can mix business and personal in one stream without upsetting either group with irrelevant content because you choose what each group (circle) sees. And it beats Twitter by not forcing you to talk in scrunched up witty sound bites. The only problem with Google+ is that there aren’t enough people on there. However this push towards personalising search results means commercial sites are being forced to engage and eventually this Google gamble could turn the social world upside down so that everyone ends up using it.

7 Steps to Google+ success

1. companies need to create a presence on Google+
2. so they can engage with existing communities
3. by sharing awesome content
4. and so grow their social graph
5. Google will reward your site in search results
6. as well as embellishing your Adwords display
7. and so your click through rate will increase

Simple huh? With anything “social” we advise clients to be very clear about what they want to achieve from their efforts. It makes sense to understand the audience you are reaching out to and deliver value but its just as important to measure the success of your social campaigns.

Google has made it a very simple decision for companies to make the choice to adopt a Google+ campaign – the message is that if you don’t you could be left behind. So lets get started

Getting a Presence on Google+

Create a Google+ Profile and Business Page

This video is a Google webinar with full instructions on “Getting you Business on Google+” its 34mins and covers everything you need to know to get set up. It also includes some pro tips dotted throughout which are well worth taking note of .

Draft Up Your Google+ Social Strategy

Your social strategy needs to match with your business objectives so it needs some thought and planing otherwise you can easily waste a lot of time and achieve very little.

Here are some pointers to get your strategic juices flowing:

• Which platforms will your target audience favour? Be on them e.g. Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Google+
• What do you want your campaigns to achieve? E.g. brand awareness, links, new leads, customer service, write down all the reasons you are doing this.
• Who will run your social campaigns? – inhouse or outsourced
• What measures of success will you use? E.g. traffic measures: analytics will tell you about traffic referrals & what those visitors do; how valuable are they compared to other sources; or, social engagement metrics: are your followers increasing, are you getting retweets and mentions. Identify suitable measures and monitor them monthly.
• What is your Content Strategy? This is really important as it should outline what awesome and original content you will have to share with your community on an ongoing basis. E.g. blog posts, tutorials, video, webinars, white papers, infographics, widgets, resources/knowledgebase etc.
• Decide HOW you will interact with your community and stick to your own rules. E.g. find and follow the influencers in your industry, develop relationships with them, gain trust by being helpful and providing quality information, retweet/share their stuff, engage in conversation, ask questions etc.
• Be real! “Social” means treating people online like you would face-to-face.

When you have decided on your strategy and tactics start implementing them but keep your strategy under review constantly & update anything that needs a tweak. And don’t forget those measures of success, they will help keep you focused.

At Strategy we have previously advised on but not run social campaigns for clients, this is changing as we see how our creative link building strategies are integrating with social engagement. SEO is evolving constantly but these creative and social factors are the most exciting aspect of internet marketing. Its harder work, demanding more commitment to the long game and greater resources but the end result is worth it.

Circle Strategy Internet Marketing on Google+ or +KathDawson and +1 this post by clicking the link just under the title. Please share your comments and views on Search, Plus Your World and how you think this will affect your business.

With fictitious holidays all over us like a bad rash, “Cyber Monday” stands out with the most blatant aim – Getting our money. Still, you have to congratulate whoever came up with this concept, it is genius and it’s bold and not afraid to deliver its message, almost like a Lynx advert, except you’d have to swap the genius part for overt misogyny.

Cyber Monday is the Monday that follows Black Friday; the opening of Christmas gift hunting season on the high street.

However, instead of scaring shop workers with demanding requests for life perfection, people will face a friendly looking website and avoid the rage caused by too many people in little space.

Though they may still be faced with those annoying pop-up surveys…

The Marketing aspect of Cyber Monday is genius, no question about it. And when there are millions of people flooding the internet with card details at the ready, it’s even more vital to have a functioning website that will not collapse under the pressure of this 24-hour feeding frenzy.

The Virtual Shopping Basket

If the navigation works like a charm, customers are of course more likely to buy the products, but the last hurdle before getting an order in is that dreaded checkout process.

Until then, shoppers are frivolously adding bits and bobs to their virtual baskets, so when it comes to paying, it’s make or break.

Good SEO will not only get customers through the online shopping gates but it will keep them there, preferably with no easy way to navigate away without a page refresh, until they make a purchase that is.

Good Website/Bad Website

An easy to navigate website that finds the right products within seconds will not only satisfy the demanding shopper, but also make them reach again for that worn out piece of plastic.

However, a bad website is the equivalent of a cold atmosphere after stepping into a deserted cafe on a Sunday morning, trying to catch the attention of a grumpy barista, and getting served instant coffee for the price of real espresso (true story).

The experience is spine-chillingly bad, and one vouches to never visit that place ever again.

But with so much competition on the internet matched with its large-scale reach, no one has to.

A website is never the only one of its kind on the global high street, and so this reception is the last thing a company wants pushed on a customer.

Looming Deadline

This year’s Cyber Monday has now passed but Christmas is only now getting into the hot zone, where the looming deadline of the last day of the timely Christmas delivery gets ever closer.

Instead of bombarding customers with SALE products that never ever seem to be out of sale, improving the website and its usability is the first important step in any business’s lifespan.

So getting ready for, what will surely be another record breaking spending day in the next year, think about a friendly user interface, and good SEO.

Customers may not be aware of it, but it should be top of Santa’s wishlist for any online business in 2011.

You may have noticed in recent months that there is a new version of analytics accessible within your existing account. It looks quite different but has much of the same data. The navigation is organised in a more sensible way and the filtering options & advanced segments are easier to manage. Its a step forward in more ways that just the layout and usability interface. There are a number of new features that allow you to explore your data in deeper and more interesting ways:

Google Analytics Real-Time

Reporting in “real-time” allows you to see what’s happening on your site right now! The reports are updated continuously and each pageview is reported only seconds after it occurs on your site. For Real-Time reports look in the ‘Home’ tab.

Multi-Channel Funnels

This is an excellent new feature as it allows you to see which channels your visitors used during the 30 day period prior to them converting or purchasing. By looking at your conversion path data you can see visitors who found your site first through PPC and then returned to convert through organic search. This section measures the performance of clicks from many media channels including paid and organic searches, affiliates, social networks, and display ads.

See a Video demo & a Guide to using the Multi-Channel Funnels Report.

Mobile Reporting

As the number of visitors using mobile devices to browse the web increases the new mobile reports in analytics helps you understand how these new visitors are interacting with your site. By seeing how many visitors use your site from various devices you can make decisions about optimising for those devises.

Flow Visualization

This completely new report shows visually how visitors navigate through your site. This report is replaces the clunky navigation tools available in the old version of Google Analytics.

Watch the Video demo for more details and check out the Usage guides for Visitor Flow and Goal Flow

Over the next few weeks the new version of Google Analytics will become the default.

Strategy Internet Marketing are seeking to build relationships with talented journalism and creative writing students.
We are currently looking for volunteer bloggers to write interesting and engaging blogs on a wide range of different topics.
This is an excellent opportunity for any writers who are looking to gain some valuable industry experience and get published online.

What’s in it for you?

• Successful blog posts will be published with the author’s name in the bio.
• Authors will be provided with a link to the published content so that they can see it online.
• Authors will gain work experience by dealing with our editors, working to high standards & gaining feedback to help them improve & get more publications.
• Authors can reference us on their CV as being volunteer bloggers for Strategy Internet Marketing.
• The opportunity for a long term relationship with Strategy, as this is an ongoing project.
• The possibility of paid opportunities for other projects, for those who prove themselves and are committed.

What we are looking for…

• Well written, well researched & interesting content for publication.
• An ongoing relationship with good writers who are able to produce quality work and meet deadlines.

For more information contact louise@strategyinternetmarketing.co.uk.

In the good name of charity and amusing facial hair, willing members of the Strategy team have decided to form a Moustache Brotherhood and participate in Movember. It’s like November, but much hairier! It also offers an excellent opportunity for us all to be lazy and unshaven without fear of seeming lazy or unshaven. Fabulous

All of the team, apart from those who are blessed with hair follicles on their faces which prevent them from participating at a genetic level (or with too much personal pride (a rarity in Internet Marketing, but there are those among us who still care about how they look)) are growing moustaches. Big, hairy ones. Massive food interceptors which reduce their pulling power (which, if we’re honest, is negligible in most cases on the best of days) to zero. Monster moustaches which say, ‘Sweet mercy, look at me. I should not be allowed in the workplace for I am ridiculous, yet here I am, so you must worship me. Bow before me and pray for the end of Movember so I may be eradicated. And please stop laughing…’

Equal opportunities are very important at Strategy Towers, and we didn’t want the ladies to feel left out, so we gave them the opportunity to join the team and grow their leg hair in a bid to help us raise some dosh. This idea was received with the same iciness which saw the untimely demise of the Titanic, so as an alternative we suggested they might consider buying some fake beards so they could go all Life of Brian. I can’t understand why, but they ignored this most reasonable of ideas and instead decided they would simply point and laugh at our hairy chops. Such is the price we Mo Bros must pay.

The aim of this selfless act of stubble growth is to raise vital awareness and moolah for men’s health, most specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. I’ve set up a team called Strategy S E Mo (sometimes I’m so witty I amaze even myself) which allows anyone who wants to sponsor us the ability to release their unneeded copious wads of cash into the hands of people who require it and can put it to very good use. Please click on the following link to release the moths: http://mobro.co/StrategyInternetMarketing

Each week we shall be taking photographic evidence of our wondrous face foliage to share with the populace of Earth, so they can recognise our suffering for this most worthy of causes. I thank you all in advance for the huge amount of money you will be giving to charity in our support. Follow our progress on Facebook.

Happy Movember – may it be a hairy one!!

For individual Mo Team pages, see the following links:
• Ollie Boyd http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1637386/
• Alex Faux http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1938076/
• John Courtney http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1945018/
• Richard James http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1787070/
• Matt Wooller http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1715396/
• Thomas King http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1666276/
• Chris Fielden http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1628684/
• Pete Wailes http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1994524/

 

 

Cloaked in secrecy, hiding in the offices of many internet marketing agencies, reside sneaky Bowling Ninjas who, on the quiet, possess legendary skills in the art of Ten Pin Bowling. Sadly, not many of them have taken up residency at Strategy Internet Marketing. Still, not liking to admit to possessing the collective bowling prowess of an out of date tin of Spam, the team decided a mission was needed. A social event was planned to find out answers. Most specifically, one answer. An answer to the ultimate question:

Who at SIM could lob a lump of plastic reactive resin down a bowling alley and cause the most devastating carnage to the neat formation of pins so beautifully arranged at its zenith?

As questions go, this is one is the Daddy. Forget lesser questions such as, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ At least you can have a pint and force an answer from this bad boy.

The photos are likely to show that the bar sidetracked many lesser-willed Bowling Ninjas and destroyed their powers entirely. Most notably, Andy ‘Bluto’ Price, client manager of extraordinary ability, but bowler of unfathomable ineptness, who chalked up the evening’s most embarrassing total of 37 after losing all hand-to-eye coordination through an overindulgence of the sweet nectar known as cider. Oh dear.

Beant ‘Badger’ Bajwa developed an extraordinary bowling technique which defied gravity. While her bowl travelled more slowly than a sleeping Sloth which had had all its limbs amputated on a whim, she still managed to achieve a mighty score of 110!  See  photos of this amazing phenomenon and lots more on Facebook.

But while some of the team tried to fathom how Beant’s bowling technique managed to defy the laws of physics, a battle was underway. Alex Van Halen had laid down the Bowling Gauntlet of Challenge by winning the first game with a whopping score of 129 (I told you we didn’t have many Bowling Ninjas in residence at our establishment). But low, the red mist fell on the Meadow of the Ten Pin. Those among us of a more competitive nature began lobbing bowling balls with ruthless ferocity. Pins were smashed and for a while Woolly Mattmoth and Alex Van Halen were in contention for the most coveted of prizes – the Strategy Internet Marketing Supreme Bowling Champion Trophy. But then they saw hunger and madness dancing a crazed tango in JC’s eyes and realised that if they didn’t let him win they might be out of a job.

And so, the mighty JC won the prize with a monster score of 161. The trophy now sits safe in his office behind a protective electric force-field so none may steal it. Every now and then a smile caresses JC’s lips as he remembers the sweet taste of victory. But how long can the trophy be kept from the rest of the team who are hungry for revenge and an opportunity to revel in victory? That question can only be answered on the next Quest of the Bowling Champions.

 

Just a quick post for all you developers out there – I’ve quickly hacked together a function for getting the number of shares of a url on Google+. I can’t be the only one out there who needs this, so I thought I’d give back to the community with it. This implimentation is in PHP, but it shouldn’t be too hard to understand and port.


<?php
$ch = curl_init();

$encUrl = "https://plusone.google.com/u/0/_/+1/fastbutton?url=".urlencode($url)."&count=true";

$options = array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true, // return web page
CURLOPT_HEADER => false, // don't return headers
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true, // follow redirects
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "", // handle all encodings
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'spider', // who am i
CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER => true, // set referer on redirect
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 5, // timeout on connect
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 10, // timeout on response
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 3, // stop after 10 redirects
CURLOPT_URL => $encUrl,
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST => 0,
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false,
);

curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);

$content = curl_exec($ch);
$err = curl_errno($ch);
$errmsg = curl_error($ch);

curl_close($ch);

if ($errmsg != '' || $err != '') {
print_r($errmsg);
print_r($errmsg);
}
else {
$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
@$dom->loadHTML($content);
$domxpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$newDom = new DOMDocument;
$newDom->formatOutput = true;

$filtered = $domxpath->query("//div[@id='aggregateCount']");
return $filtered->item(0)->nodeValue;
}
?>


Enjoy!