1. Attempt to detect these scam +1 votes, and either ignore them or penalise the targetted sites (although the latter is risky as it can be exploited to destroy the ranking of competitors)
2. Focus on encouraging more genuine use of the +1 button, so any +1 results that can affordably be bought are lost in the noise.
3. The spy vs spy option. Start selling +1 votes themselves under a dummy name, and then immediately remove them as spam (whilst optionally continuing to display them in google analytics). Google could of course afford to undercut all other sellers, and their +1 selling services could appear at the top of all relevant searches, rather than other sites attempting the same.
Option 1 seems the most likely for google, but if I were a small startup I'd definitely pick option 3, then blog about it a few months later.
1. Attempt to detect these scam +1 votes, and either ignore them or penalise the targetted sites (although the latter is risky as it can be exploited to destroy the ranking of competitors)
2. Focus on encouraging more genuine use of the +1 button, so any +1 results that can affordably be bought are lost in the noise.
3. The spy vs spy option. Start selling +1 votes themselves under a dummy name, and then immediately remove them as spam (whilst optionally continuing to display them in google analytics). Google could of course afford to undercut all other sellers, and their +1 selling services could appear at the top of all relevant searches, rather than other sites attempting the same.
Option 1 seems the most likely for google, but if I were a small startup I'd definitely pick option 3, then blog about it a few months later.