Earlier today people began seeing +1 counts for sites in their search results even if they weren’t logged in to their Google account. It was only a matter of time before this happened, and the move will likely increase the adoption of the +1 button. When we searched for major sites (Mashable, Facebook) and Google properties, their +1 counts were displayed but smaller sites that we’ve favorited did not have their counts displayed, so there is likely some threshold before a site’s +1 count is displayed.
The +1 count could have a huge affect on rankings as a signal and traffic as a way of boosting organic CTR. The product is only a few months old, but since it is now tied into search, it is obvious that Google is really pushing for its success.
In PPC news, Google has also been testing displaying click counts on some pay-per-click ads but the company said it was only a small experiment to learn more about page layout and visitor response and that there was no information on whether this strategy will be implemented in the future.