Google Adds Social Search

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Google has connected their search engine to social media, creating a social search engine. It allows users to find their friend’s blogs, status updates and reviews of things they may be searching for.

For example, say you want to know how that latest blockbuster film was, so you type in the title and reviews. Sure you could read what the critics are saying, but you might place more stock in your friend’s opinion because you know them, and you know they have similar taste to you. That provides you with a totally personalized search index, which in turn delivers more valuable information to you.

Features of Social Search

Google didn’t stop there though. They also added several features to their social search option, making it extremely wide reaching.

Google Images: Google Images has been tweaked with social search, so that when you search for an image, your friend’s pictures may pop up. This can be useful if you’re searching for a picture of a cat, and don’t want to worry about permissions and ...
... all that legal mumbo jumbo. If you know the person that the image belongs to, you can just ask them if you can post a picture of Sammy on your next blog post.

“My Social Circle:” You will also notice some new links. “My social circle” is one of them. Selecting the “my social circle” link will open a window that shows your online contacts and how your network is connected. For example, if you follow someone on Twitter, and they follow five other people, you may see relevant content from all of them. If the person you follow on Twitter has a blog they link to, you will also get content from that blog in your Google social search index, thanks to the “my social circle” feature.

“My Social Content:” “My social content” is the other link that will give you more information on what social content you are sharing with the world. It’s an excellent way to keep track of your public information and how it looks to other searchers. It will also help you understand exactly what you’re sharing so that you can be very aware of what you’re putting out there.

How do you get it?

In order to take advantage of Google’s social search features you’ll have to create a Google profile. While Google is awesome, it’s not omniscient †at least not yet. So you have to tell them who you are, and what you would like to link to, like your twitter account and any blogs you follow.

To take full advantage of Google’s social search, you’ll need a Gmail account, and you’ll need a bunch of friends and family with Gmail accounts. That way you’ll automatically be linked to everyone and what they’re all looking for.

Currently the social search feature is being left with a beta label because Google feels the possibilities for expansion haven’t quite been fully explored yet. In their blog, Google stated “We think there’s tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.”

Social Search and SEO

The addition of Social Search only increases the importance of investing time in social media for business owners. It gives Google more chances to find you, more chances to rank you, and more opportunities to get clicked on.

So if you’ve been putting off joining Facebook, Twitter and the like, you may want to jump on the social media band wagon. If you don’t, your competition certainly will. And with Facebook alone projected to have 1 billion users in the near future, is it a market you can afford to ignore?