While researching for a client on the use of Social Media for their business I came across this interesting result at the bottom of my Google search.
Google calls it “Social Search” and launched it last October in Google labs, but it has now graduated and is available in beta for all signed-in users on google.com in English.
Social Search Results are now in beta on Google
When I wrote about the “Live Web” being integrated with search results the excitement was that Google was now able to serve up Twitter, Facebook and News articles in real-time as part of your search results – sort the same as a stock ticker would as trades are made. This Live Web offering was captivating because you were watching other people’s opinions pop up before your eyes as they wrote them.
But Social Search is far more important because the contributions are from peers or services you know making the search results more relevant. And the user is the one who controls the “Social Circle” – they choose who is in and who is out…
The solution uses this “Social Circle” function to search your direct connections from your Google profile and serves up any results that match your query. And this is why it is so “relevant”, to use a term. It provides you results from your peer-to-peer network, searching your direct connections from your Google chat buddies and contacts, direct connections from links listed on your Google profile (such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Face book) and secondary connections that are publicly associated with your direct connections.
And in addition to the web pages from your “social circle”, if you are a subscriber to Google Reader any RSS feeds that you follow may also appear in your social search results.
This is exciting and has so many legs to it. The “word of mouth” or recommendation effect this has on your search results – because you know the person or social media that the result is coming from – would make you more likely to (a) read it or (b) deem it relevant as far as results are concerned.
Again, just when you start to question Google’s ability to compete with new technologies such as Twitter and Friendfeed, or even suggest the search engine is becoming a little 2009, they come out with a solution where they work with other services (not compete or set out to destroy) to provide the consumer a better experience.
Nice.
