Google and Social Search

by Admin


29 Jan
 None    Search Engines


by Jody Nimetz


by Jody Nimetz
http://www.enquiro.com

Yesterday, I blogged about a great webinar in my post B2B Social Best Practices in the Marketing Cloud, where the discussion centered saround B2B companies and social media strategies. Everyone keeps saying that 2010 is the year for social. The fact is that some organizations have been developing social strategies for years. Social is not new, but it is a hot topic for many B2B companies as they are shuffling budget over to develop social strategies.
Yesterday, Google also rolled out something that they first mentioned back in Octrober and that is Google Social Search. The reasoning behind this? Well Google understands that people on the web today make social connections and publish web content in many different ways, such as with blogs, status updates and tweets. This has translated into a “public social web of content” that has special relevance to each person. Unfortunately, that information isn’t always very easy to find in one simple place. This is where Google Social Search comes in.

Google Social Search: What is It?

According to Google, Google Social Search helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle. Social Search takes personalized search results to a new level. Basically Google finds relevant “public” content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. Google has illustrated an example here. Google states that “All the information that appears as part of Google Social Search is published publicly on the web – you can find it without Social Search if you really want to.” So what Google is saying as they have done the legwork for you and compiled this data to make it easier for you to find. The goal is to make your results more relevant. This really is another level of personalization.

So how does Google do this? Well Google builds social profile or social circle based on things such as who you are following on Twitter or on FriendFeed. In addition, Google uses information they collect from Gmail to include your chat buddies and contacts in your friends, family and coworkers froups. Of course for Google Social Search to work, you need to be signed into your personal Google account. Google Social Search also factors in websites that you may be subscribing to via GoogleReader if you in fact use this service as a feed reader.

What kind of content will you see with Google Social Search?

Expect to see information that can be accessed via your interaction with Google services as well as social network information from places such as Twitter. As Google mentions the types of content that you can expect to see includes:

  • Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles
  • Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles
  • Images posted publicly from your social circle on Picasa Web and from websites linked from their Google profiles
  • Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions

Overall, I’m not sure how successful this will be for Google. I mean this is only beneficial to users who have a personal Google account. I’m not sure if everyone is ok with the fact that Google is reminding users about how much data they have collected about them based on theironline social experiences. You can see a list of your social circle connections at google.com/s2/search/social. Will this contribute to information overload for users, or will it in fact do just the opposite? Regardless Google is getting social and is working to help you manage your online social activity.

More on Google Social Search


Copyright 2008 - Enquiro Search Solutions.



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