Mountain View, California — Late last year, Google introduced its social search experiment with the aim of making search more social, but the search giant has kept it pretty much under wraps from the general public, choosing to make it an opt-in Google Labs feature. Though it still have beta tag on it, it is now mainstream. Google’s Social Search service, which includes public content from users’ social networks in search results, is getting promoted to Google.com from the company’s Labs site, and turning it on for all signed-in English Googlers.
Pretty soon, Google is attempting allow English-language users of its search engine see relevant links from people they know and connect with online, including some of the novel features to its search page and integrating social-networking contacts. Google hopes to improve your search results with this information. Social Search results will also appear in the Google Images engine, the company said in a blog post Wednesday.
If people were already witnessing different search results from each other before, that is certainly going to be true now, now that Google is gathering results based on the individual’s social circle into any given SERP. This is one of the many ways the concept of SEO is changing these day, and it would appear that any business looking to get some play in Google search, would do well to have as many connections established as possible, via various social networking sites and tools.
By releasing the beta, Google is also merging social search into Google Image searches, which suggests you can scroll down to view pictures corresponding to your query that contacts from your circle — friends and friends of friends — have shared online.
As Maureen Heymans, Google’s technical lead for social search, writes on Google’s official blog, the company is planning to integrate “social circles” and “social content”:
Looking at the screenshot, you may notice two new links for “My social circle” and “My social content”. These links will take you to a new interface we have added where you can see the connections and content behind your social results. Clicking on “My social circle” shows your extended network of online contacts and how you are connected.
Clicking on “My social content” lists your public pages that might appear in other people’s social results. This new interface should give you a peek under the hood of how Social Search builds your social circle and connects you with web content from your friends and extended network.
Combining social-networking content into its search index is both a necessary complement to its search results and a competitive move for Google, said industry analyst Greg Sterling from Sterling Market Intelligence.
Content from popular sites like Twitter has turned out to be increasingly valuable for distinguishing trends and for following breaking news events. Google is aware that Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networks are nabbing a bigger portion of the time people spend online.
“You can view social-network search results as a valuable new source of information and content that helps people make decisions and be informed,” he said. “You can also see this as an attempt to displace the defection of people to these other services.”
“There is both an objective reason for doing it and a competitive reason. Both are present here in this product launch,” Sterling added.
To enjoy Social Search, users have to be signed in to their Google account. Google also suggests that people create a Google Profile, which they can then populate with addresses to their blogs, social networks, photo-sharing accounts and so on. Google can then gather the contacts and connections in those sites, as well as in Google services like Gmail and Google Reader, and index publicly available, relevant content for these users’ Social Search query results.
For a demonstration of Google Social Search check out the video below: