It's no secret that Google missed the boat when Facebook released it's "Like" button a little over a year ago. The little blue button is now so ubiquitous that it's now the norm rather than the exception to see a blog, product or service with some kind of Facebook integration.

But what Facebook has, Google wants and after the demise of it's Buzz network, it was only a matter of time unil the search kings came out fighting. In March, Google released it's +1 button to accentuate it's search results and yesterday, they rolled it out for integration into 3rd party sites. That's you and me!

Here's a quick video by Google explaining the concept and what it does.

If you're interested in adding the +1 button to your own site, it's pretty straigh forward. You can follow the instructions on the +1 page or you can use a 3rd party tool such as AddThis.com which will allow you to add a bunch of share icons within one easy to use tool.

Here's an example of the button running on our own web site.