Google’s +1 button on petco.com.

Google introduced +1, its equivalent to the Facebook “like” and Twitter “tweet” buttons, in March, and three months later unveiled its own social network, Google+. The Internet company has been working hard ever since to make +1 as ubiquitous on the web as “like,” in part by tying +1 to Google+ so that users browsing the web can hit the +1 button to share their findings with their circles on Google+. Still following? This week the Google team announced that they are rolling out +1 to retail sites, and have partnered with two social shopping tech companies, PowerReviews and Bazaarvoice, to help e-commerce sites integrate the +1 button across their platforms.

+1 on jockey.com.

Two of the first retail sites to add the +1 button are petco.com and jockey.com; more will certainly follow now that Google’s made it easy to integrate. Can Google compete with Facebook in that regard? Perhaps not, but with Facebook grabbing much of Google’s referral traffic, the search engine certainly has to try.