Google Social Search

Last week there was an announcement made by Marissa Mayer (VP at Google) that was eclipsed by the Google/Twitter/Bing deal. Marissa introduced a new search feature that will be available soon, Google Social Search.

So, what exactly is it?

Google’s Social Search is a new feature that aims to improve search by using your social networks. Once that you are logged in and perform a search, Google will include snippets at the bottom of the page containing relevant content written by people in your social network.

It also works for images, where you will be able to filter the images to show the ones that are related to your network and therefore more relevant to you.
Social Search will be particularly useful when doing local searches. Let’s say that you want to know about the restaurant in the corner, or maybe you want to know about the latest blockbuster in your cinema. Social search will let you find out about which of your friends have said about it before.

How does it work?

When a search is carried out, Google looks into your Google profile to see what sites you have associated with your account. By doing that, they can determine what people you are connected to.
But wait. It is not just about your friends. If the results are relevant enough, it also includes friends of friends. If you take into account that the service includes Facebook, Twitter, Gmail contacts, Linkedin, YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, FriendFeed, MySpace, etc. then you have a massive network to look at.

When?

Social Search will be rolled out to Google Labs in a few weeks. As long as you are logged in and have a full profile in Google, you will be able to sign in to use this feature when it is available.