Friday, May 20, 2011

Google social search goes global

What is this social search on google?

  • It’s basically an update on what Google has been up to with regards to social media search results when someone searches for a certain keyword (e.g. if you search for a cooking recipe, a blogpost from Bruna on her recipe might come up in your search results)
  • Google will search all your contacts/ friends to find relevant info and include them in the results throughout the SERP
  • This is in response to Bing who have direct FB integration for their searches. Google does not use direct integration with FB, only indirectly.
  • Google tends to use only its own network (e.g Google Chat, Youtube, Gmail, Buzz, Chrome etc.) for social searches
  • The nice thing about the Google social searches is that you can click on a friends/ contacts name and choose “show path” to find out how and where you are connected with them.
  • Google also allows you to choose your “social circle” to specify who you want receive social search results from. This is done on the Google dashboard.

What do you think? Should Google be worrying about SOCIAL search or stick to the basics...?