Blogger Adds +1 Data to Dashboard to Track Popular Posts

This afternoon, Blogger introduced a small update to user dashboards, letting blog owners see how many +1's their content has achieved across the web, including +1's from Google Reader and search results, from your personal dashboard. Now, in addition to traditional statistics familiar to blog authors, like those found in Google Analytics, you can now see a quick + count next to the number of comments and page views - helping show the impact your most popular posts have received.

As I haven't been very active of late on the blog, I haven't done much to deserve +1's from every corner - something I'm looking to get back to doing shortly. But it's fun to see my August announcement of joining the Google+ team got 105 +1's and the Ten Step Guide to Giving Good Social from July also cracked the 100 +1's mark. And working on the Google+ team, I know that as we don't automate +1 activity, every +1 was done by a human being who took the time to show endorsement of my content.

The Addition of +1 data is displayed in the Blogger dashboard.

Watching how many +1s your content gets, and seeing who your most passionate readers are could play a big role in just what you decide to write about in the future - as page views, retweets and likes have. It's a lightweight way to gauge user satisfaction and get a view into your growing community.

Disclosure: I joined Google in August to work on the Google+ team. Blogger is a Google product.