Often when you are looking for a new product or service you may seek out the advice of your friends, family, colleagues or other close sources who may have also tried that product or service. Their recommendations can have a tremendous influence on whether you decide to try it or not. Google has taken this train of thought into their search results with their new feature called, +1.

Google’s +1 is their way of letting you tell others, “this is pretty cool.” If you are a regular user of Facebook you are sure to be familiar with the “Like” option for pages and updates that you approve of.

This is the same concept with Google +1; you can tell your friends and contacts that you personally recommend a website by giving it the +1 in search results.

You currently need a Google profile and be logged in to be able to see +1 results or to give a +1. You can make your +1 public or private and you will be able to see if any of your personal contacts have +1’ed a site with a high +1 score. Whether or not +1 will go into the regular search results letting everyone see or give their “+1” is still to be seen. There is speculation, however, that this could eventually affect Google’s search algorithms, letting more popular sites rank higher in results, although currently Google claims this is not the case. As it is now, sites and search results with multiple +1’s by your network of connections could be more influential on which sites you visit than ranking alone, affecting overall click through rates.

You can get more information and see a short video about +1 at http://www.google.com/+1/button/ or read about it on Google’s Official Blog.