Google Takes Another Big Step In Socializing SearchSearch continues to get more social at Google. Thats right – Google has just embedded a customized 'Social Search' feature in its search results. Tagged with a beta label, this new 'Social Search' facility will be available to all users on Google within a few days. Google recommends everyone to create a Google profile. In the blog post by Maureen Heymans, Technical Lead for Social Search, and Terran Melconian, Technical Lead for Social Image Search we learn that:

“We think there's tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we're just beginning to scratch the surface. We're leaving a "beta" label on social results because we know there's a lot more we can do. If you want to get the most out of Social Search right away, get started by creating a Google profile, where you can add links to your other public online social services.”

Last  October, Google rolled out a new experiment on Google Labs called Google 'Social Search' that helped us find more relevant public content from a broader social circle. This social search service shows  public content from searchers’ social networks in the search results. To use this the user needs to be signed in to their Google account.  Users would then be able to see items posted publicly on the web by their social networking cohorts for a given search query made. This helps users learn about the views and opinions from their social circle about the topic. Often this could give better information to the searcher about a given topic. 

This new version adds many more features.  Google has added this facility to Google Image Search too. With Google Image Search you can now view the pictures and images published by people in  your social circle on photo sharing sites like Picasa and Flickr. It would look like this:

 New Google Social Image Search

Clicking on ‘results from your social circle’ gives you the albums or images published by people from your social group. The other two links – My social circle and My social content - will take you to a new interface where you can see the connections and content behind your social results. Those who want to check out your social circle can do it by visiting this link.

What impact does this have on the online community? 

It is becoming more apparent that the individual is gaining a louder voice in communication-media models. People are turning more and more to ‘user generated content’ to form opinions on various informationial topics. Google’s new 'Social Search' service will only strengthen this concept.  Kudos once again to Google for perceiving market trends and adjusting their 'algo' accordingly.

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