Last year, Google brought out Social Search in Google Labs. Just a few days ago it graduated to Beta in Google. That’s all nice and dandy, but what is Google Social Search, and how can you benefit from it? Here’s what you need to know.
What is Google Social Search
Google Social Search pulls together information from blogs and social networking sites about the topic you are searching on. What’s special about it, is that it pulls together information on that topics, posted by your contacts and friends. The purpose for this is that you are accessing information posted by people you already know, and trust.
How do you use Social Search?
To use Google Social Search you need to put in a tiny bit of effort first, before any related search results posted by your friends pop up. Next time you type something into the Google search bar, first make sure you’ve done the following to benefit from any know-how your contacts have posted online:
Once you’re at Google Profiles, click on the blue button that says “create my profile”.
Fill in the information requested, and link your profile to social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
At the bottom of the page, you can complete the process.
Now that you have set up your Google Profile, you can view information posted by your friends next time you perform a Google search. What will show up depends on what you have added to your Google Profile.
In addition, for social search, to work you need to be signed in to you Google account. Anything that is displayed in the search results is already published on the Internet, so technically you can find any of the information anyways, but social search puts it all together in one spot. The idea behind it is that hopefully you will get more relevant search results.
If you use Gmail, your Google Chat contacts are also included for social search, as well as your friends, family, and coworkers groups. If you’ve linked Google Reader to your profile, then some content from websites you already subscribe to may also be part of the social search results.
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