Google Rolls Out Social Search

Google hasn’t had much luck with social thus far, but the big search engine that could keeps chugging along. They have recently unrolled Social Search in an effort to personalise and customise search results and harness the power of social media. People are increasingly turning to sites like Facebook to find products, services, news, advice, recommendations, and more. Google wants to remain the go-to. How does Social Search work?

In the demo provided by Google, you will see the search query “New Zealand” entered. This is a very broad search term, and Social Search aims to narrow it down. At the bottom of the page, you will start seeing a category entitled, “Results from people in your social circle.” Maybe you have a friend who visited; maybe you have a contact who lives there. Whatever the case, the goal is to make the wide world a little more navigable. Whether you want to track down a friend’s blog in London or get some information about local businesses in New York, you can do it with Social Search – as long as your friends are also social.

To use, you add the social networks you are part of to your Google profile page. Whether you have profiles on Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, YouTube, all of the above, or more, you can potentially connect with others via search. You can control your privacy settings to achieve a greater level of anonymity; see how here.

Google has launched Social Search in 19 languages thus far and plans on adding more. Google has found itself at a disadvantage in the social media world because of strong alliances between Facebook and Bing, and with this feature, they hope to start changing that.