Back in June or so I added the Google +1 button to my site, but like most people I did it because, well, it’s Google. (Use the Google button maker to get your +1 button)

The truth is nobody really had much idea what the payoff for clicking that button was. There’s always the implication that pages with lots of +1s would naturally get a little bump in the Google algorithm, but certainly no word from Google on that.

Today the +1 Button’s payoff is very clear. Google has added a feature that in my mind mandates the addition of the +1 button to your pages and blog posts.

Now, when someone finds some content that they want to +1 they will have to option to share the content directly to Google Plus and whatever circles they choose just by hovering over the +1 button. This makes the +1 button on par with the Facebook Send and LinkedIn InShare buttons in terms of potential exposure the +1d content can receive.

Some things to note:

• You don’t have to be a Google Plus user to put the +1 button on your site
• The persons doing the +1 must be a Google Plus user
• They must be logged in when they hover over +1 button to see the added feature

Google also gives the more techie types the tools to edit what gets shared – such as the image, title and description that are suggested when someone chooses to share. Using what Google calls +snippets you can add code to dictate the default for these. (In Wordpress you should get in the habit of using the featured image setting for images in your blog posts.)

I wrote about how add the +1 button to your site here. You can also use a +1 WordPress Plugin to make this happen on a Wordpress blog.