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Is this "(name of person) shared this" content showing on first page of results because they're in my social graph. Or would this content have been on 1st page regardless of whether it had been shared? The latest statement I heard from Google was the +1 data is being collect but is NOT being used to alter search results. They also made it clear that this data could be used in the future for that purpose. Why is google identifying who is sharing content when they're not in my social graph? There is a process from Google called Authorship where any content created by a known author can be identified with their picture. For example, do a search for Matt Cutts in Google and you will find the results which are authored by him recently from his blog show his picture. It is possible for him to author content elsewhere and it may or may not be identified with his picture depending on whether the publishing site used the proper tags. I believe the pictures you are seeing are from Author identification, not from the Google +1 process. This is the current Google standard now.

These are all great responses. In the coming months, we will be integrating the following URLS steripen.com (custom cms), community.steripen.com (Wordpress blog) and buysteripen.com (Magento store) into the core domain of steripen.com. Unfortunately we can't fold our GetSatisfaction implemention under the domain as well. will have to keep subdomain for that. Not looking forward to the potential effects of this but all this feedback is greatly appreciated.