It looks interesting.  Google says “The +1 button combines word of mouth with the power of Google search by incorporating personal recommendations right into search results and ads on Google.com. By putting the +1 button on your pages you can help your site stand out, bringing you more, better qualified traffic from organic search results and search ads.

“Let’s say you run a travel review site. Brian is having a wonderful time at the Grand Hotel in Madrid, and he visits the Grand Hotel page on your siteto find out what other guests are saying. He sees your +1 button and clicks it, recommending your page to his friends and contacts. Six months later, Brian’s friend Ann is planning a Spanish vacation of herown. She signs in to her Google account, searches for Madrid hotels, andsees your review site – along with the personalized annotation that Brian+1’d it. Knowing that Brian recommends your site helps Ann decide whereto start her travel research.

They go on to say ” Since January 2010, we’ve been using public data from social services, such as Twitter and Flickr, as signals in organic search rankings. Now we’ll use+1’s as an additional signal in organic search to help users find recommendations from their friends and contacts.As results become more personal and relevant, we believe that users are not only more likely to visit your site, but they’re more likely to interact with it as well. Personalized annotations bring you pre-qualified users,who are not only actively looking for your content, but are actively engaged after seeing recommendations from friends and contacts. This powerful combination may result in deeper engagement with your site overall.You can add +1 buttons to your site in a matter of minutes! Simply add a small snippet of JavaScript to every page where you’d like the +1 button to appear. To configure the button code for your site and generate the snippet, visit http://google.com/webmasters/+1button”

For organisations, Google+1 looks like an important new tool.

But for users there’s a question hanging over these things.  ’What’s in it for me?’  Why would an individual bother to click ‘Like’ or ‘+1?

And crucially ‘What are the privacy issues?’  After the saga of Google Buzz, we need to know!