I’m testing Google’s newest take on social networking: Google +1 Button.

First thing is that for some reason you need to enable it in every browser you use. May be it’s because the product it’s in its experimental stage and you need to enable it specifically, and it’s using a cookie (I haven’t confirmed this, but it makes sense). So I enabled it at work, and later I had to enable it again at home (at first I though it wasn’t working at home because I use the SSL version of the web, but it’s not the case: it works perfectly with https://encrypted.google.com/).

The +1 button is supposed to allow you to make or I would say favourite links in the Google search results. Additionally those +1 will appear in your Google profile, and see the +1s of your connections in your searches (you can look at mine).

It’s not a bad idea, if you have your profile account connected with your contacts, which it’s not my case, because it’s not my main email address, and nobody that I know seems to be using Google Buzz.

If the 165 followers I have in Twitter where my contacts in my Google profile, I’m sure we could benefit of our findings and +1s because we kind of share interests and criterion.

But anyway, let’s say you have a good amount of contacts. What’s your workflow when looking for something in the web?

1. Search for something.
2. Scan the results page, and open in a new tab the ones that look promising.
3. Let’s say one of the tabs happens to be the answer you where looking for, so the process ends here. Tidy up (closing tabs, etc), and go on with your life.

So, I am supposed to go back to the search page, scan it again to find the link that provided the right tab, and click the +1 button? I’m sorry, but that’s quite unlikely.

I mean, the search is not important on itself. You’re searching for something, because you need to find it for some reason, that it’s not just the experience of searching.

I’ve found that the +1 buttons are almost invisible for me, because I never remember to go back and make the extra effort of marking something as awesome. I find more effective the bookmarklet I use for adding something to my Delicious, but then we would be talking about a different approach to the idea.

Have you tested Google +1? Is it useful to you?