Google adds social media activity to search results

Google has launched Social Search facility that enables users to discover publicly available web content from their social circle online.

Currently still in its experimental stage, when using Social Search users will sometimes see a special set of “results from people in your social circle” towards the bottom of the results page.

These social results include relevant websites, blogs, status updates, and other publicly-available content from users’ online friends and contacts.

So, for example, if a user was planning a trip to Cairo, and a friend of theirs happened to have listed great places to stay on their website, Google Social Search makes it much easier to find this kind of content.

“This is about making your search results even more relevant. For some searches, what your friends have published online might be exactly what you want,” said Director of Product Management at Google, Tom Stocky.

“For example, say you’re looking for movie reviews and one of your friends happened to write about that movie on his blog — you would probably want to read it, and that’s what Social Search makes it easier to find.”

Google account holders can try out the experimental tool via google.com/labs.
Social Search gives results from their friends, such as users’ Gmail chat friends as well as their contacts on the social sites they choose to list on their Google Profile.

For instance, if a user has added their Twitter account to their Google Profile page, tweets from the people they follow may be included in their social results