Google Social Search Adds Personalization and Trust to Search Options
Google Social Search is a new Google search option to help you find publicly available, trusted web content from your social circle of contacts.
Google Social Search finds your social circle in three ways: your public Google profile, your Google RSS blog subscriptions, and your Google Chat contacts. So it’s obviously more important now than ever before to create a Google Profile and use Google Reader for your RSS blog subscriptions. I’ve been using Pageflakes as my RSS reader, because the widgets are more organized and look better than in Google Reader. I do, however, have a Google Reader account that I set up a while ago and fully intend to update it as soon as time permits. Speaking of time, although I have no idea how long it will take, but just as is seems that by consolidating social media into one central location, Google Social Search will eventually take it over, it also implies the end of the independent RSS Readers, for example, Pageflakes and Netvibes.
Thankfully, your Google Chat contacts are never made public in social search results, so it would seem that using Google Chat would be less important than the other aforementioned Google services. It’s also important to note where personalization comes into the picture. Only you are able to see the social search results based on your social circle, extended social circle, (friends of friends) and their content in your social search results. In other words, everyone’s social search results will be different, unique, and therefore, personalized.
In a previous post, “Twitter Poll: When Did You Start Using Google Search Options,” I raised the question, how do “regular” people, meaning people not in the business of SEO even know about Google Search Options or where to find them. The same question holds true for Google Social Search. The answer is through blog posts such as Danny Sullivan’s, “Google Social Search Launches,” and hopefully this one as well. For now Google Social Search results may be found in Google Search Options that appear in the left margin when you click the Search Options link on any Google search results page.
And finally, you will not be able to see Social Search in your search options unless you sign up for it first with Google.
To learn more about Google Social Search, check out the Matt Cutts How Google Social Search Works video.
[...] but Google sometimes includes old, misdirected, or even irrelevant search results. This is where Google Search Options Recent Results come in, or if you want even fresher results, simply choose Past 24 Hours or Past [...]