Google plus one

[MattJanaway]

I think it's pretty fair to say this method should not be used - however, if you gradually built 50 +1's over a month or two then this might not be too bad - AS LONG AS it was only a small part of your overall link building project.

[TheGrid]

VERY interesting

[TheGrid]

I'm going to try this on a throw away domain and report back. It is in a highly competitive industry, has a ton of "natural" paid and  article back links behind it with little ranking success in the past few years(was great in the early part of the aughts), this will prove whether or not g+ can tip the scales.....

[MattJanaway]

Cool plan... Why not take it a step further and do three tests:

One landing page with lots of retweets.

One landing page with lots of +1's.

One landing page with lots of "likes".

Could be interesting if it is on a throw away domain?

[TheGrid]

i like it. I could get those on fiverr 5 bucks each lol. While I'm at it you can have Jesus do a comedic greeting video card for your aunt!

[TheGrid]

Well, 150 plus ones and a few weeks later, this had NO affect on my ranking

[MattJanaway]

OK, couple of questions...

• Did the +1's come from genuine accounts? What should usually class as a genuine account is an aged account which has had interactions with other accounts, has its own circles, has friends, photos, status' etc?
• Does any other page on your site have any/many +'1? - It might look slightly suspect if you dont have any other page on the site which has any social shares but then one page pops up with 150.
• Are there any other social shares on the page? It would seem strange that something worthy of being "sharable" is only shared on one platform. It looks even more suspect if it is only shared on Googles platform - how ironic...
• Is the landing page optimized at all?

There are so many fiverr gigs where they literally sit there setting up accounts (all from the same IP!) on one PC. Then there are others who actually ask genuine accounts to click the +1

Great research here! I love seeing these kind of tests

[MattJanaway]

Oh, and how competition on the search term?

[TheGrid]

Matt,

Since it was a fiverr gig I just assume it is the lowest possible quality of plus ones so the test at the very least shows that IF it might work, you definitely can't fake it.

[TheGrid]

VERY high competition "Auto Loans", "Bad Credit Auto Loans"

[MattJanaway]

HAHA Yeah... Thats the problem with the fiverr gigs, you cant actually tell their methods properly.

One way to check is to have a look at the profiles who +1 your page and see if they are real. If you can notice that they are fake then you can bet your bottom dollar that big G can too.

Nice test though, I like it!