I just got done reading a post encouraging everyone to trade +1 votes and I have to say that I very strongly urge everyone to wait before doing anything of the sort. The basic idea is if I post 5 links and you post 5 links we can each +1 (or vote) for each other's links so we can try to rank higher in Google search results. This is the very similar to black hat link services if you are familiar with that SEO practice. Trading votes is not a new idea and has been a problem for small companies that rely on votes to return results. However Google is very good at math and I am pretty sure they are already prepared to handle this scenario.
So what should I do?
I am going to encourage a little bit of restraint here. While some of what you have said is correct, I think it would be prudent to think through the law of unintended consequences, especially since what you are promoting here is what ruined Digg and made it completely useless. Here is a nice thought experiment:
- Say John Smith has Bryan in one of my circles on Google+.
- Bryan does a +1 swap with everyone he can think of that is in real estate in KC (where I live).
- John searches for real estate in KC and gets three results at the top that are all the result of Bryan giving them +1.
What happens next depends on several things we don't know yet, but your post includes lots of assumptions too so I think we are ok on balance. Here are a few possible outcomes:
- For starters, if Bryan +1's everything, they won't all show up. Google will still have to decide which of a few things it wants to show me, so his vote may end up not counting at all.
- John might click on all of the links Bryan voted for, find they aren't to his liking, and consider removing Bryan from his circle.
- Google might (and what I really mean is probably will) implement a feature to completely ban all +1's from anyone they deem a spammer.
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