Difference between Google+ Followers and Website +1's?

[ScottShrum]

Very sorry if this has been covered multiple times already… I can't find the answer anywhere…

This is a basic question: Is there a difference between someone giving my website a +1 and being counted as a follower on my Google+ page? I run a website and a Google+ page for my brand, and these two things are linked. When someone clicks on the +1 button on my site, does that show up in the count that someone sees in the red box in the upper right corner of my Google+ page? And, when someone comes to my Google+ page and adds me to a circle, is that the same as them clicking the +1 button on my site? Or are these two entirely different things? I feel like the terms are used interchangeably, but I'm not sure if it's because they really are two different things, or if they're really the same.I ask because, when I look at my company's Google+ page, it says "+300" in the upper right, but when I see my website come up in an AdWords ad, it says "[Company Name] has 240 followers on Google+"... Why are these numbers not the same?Thank you!Scott

[ScottShrum]

Anyone else want to chime in with a description of the different between follower count and +1 count?

Thanks!

[ScottShrum]

Thanks Adam. If I understand your response correctly, my page could have 5,000 followers but zero +1's, or vice versa?

I just clipped this image from a Google+ Page. These two numbers say that the page has 2,771 followers (in the red box), AND 601 people have this page in a circle. I had always thought that following a page would mean that it's in one of your circles (in which case, the 601 number would actually be equal to or greater than the 2,771 number), but I guess I've had it wrong!

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[Adam_Cochran]

Yeah these are indeed different metrics.

Think of it like someone following your brand on Twitter. Followers follow (quite obviously) and the +1's are like favoriting a tweet.

Followers would fall under the site trust category of the algorithm much like verifying with webmaster tools or Google authorship.

A +1 on the other hand is a social signal that tells Google "this page delivered what I was looking for". A sort of validation that you matched the users intent for that key term.

While I am sure they both play into the algorithm in much more complex manners and have multiple bearings on trust, intent and social sharing this example should at least help you make the distinction.