In the waning months of the previous year, Google began to introduce its Social Search experiment. For anyone unaware, Social Search functions by displaying results that are customized for you and based on the people in your social network. If, say, you’re looking for opinions on local French restaurants, Social Search would link you to a blog post that a friend may have written that includes a review of local French café, in addition to the usual results. Essentially, the idea behind this is that because you likely know or are acquainted with this person, the chances of you trusting their opinion on the subject are higher.
Although it’s been a Google Labs opt in since October of 2009, the search company is making the service available to all users as a beta product within the next several days. However, with its new beta implementation comes a few new features as well:
In addition to merely displaying results from within your social network, Google has also included a Social Search “dashboard” which displays a few bits of relevant information. That information includes exactly who’s considered part of your social circle and how you may be related to them, and a list of your content that may potentially appear in the search results of those users. While informative and undoubtedly useful, it unfortunately lacks a way to remove others from your circle or modify the list in any way.
Of equal note, is the news that Google has expanded Social Search to include images. Similar to the fashion in which relevant content from contacts may start appearing in others’ search results, any image searches will also display pertinent photos drawn from their Picasa or Flickr accounts.
As always, of course, whenever Google introduces something new to its search, it’s important to consider what impact it may have on search engine optimization (SEO). Despite the fact that we won’t truly know how to work with it until it’s more widely put into use, there are already a few ideas of how businesses can use the function to their benefit. Making more contacts through Gmail is an obvious course of action, along with fully fleshing out your Google profile.
Written by Kenny K.