jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Google announced a new service yesterday called Social Search which shows search results from sites owned by the searchers online friends. Currently an opt-in service but widely expected to go live over the next few months it cements the need for brands to have a Twitter account, Facebook page & a decent blog.

Data on a persons social circle is pulled from their contacts in Gmail, the people they follow on Twitter, the blogs they read on Google Reader. Google has a help centre article explaining more about how it works.

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. What we’ve done is surface that content together in one single place to make your results more relevant. The way we do it is by building a social circle of your friends and contacts using the connections linked from your public Google profile, such as the people you’re following on Twitter or FriendFeed. The results are specific to you, so you need to be signed in to your Google Account to use Social Search. If you use Gmail, we’ll also include your chat buddies and contacts in your friends, family, and coworkers groups. And if you use Google Reader, we’ll include some websites from your subscriptions as part of your social search results.

The next generation of search

At present Google is only including these results as a universal search element in the same way they embed news results. However there is little doubt that in the same way news results are giving priority for certain queries we will start to see results from our social circles being given a boost in the normal search results too.

This makes perfect sense, if I follow a brand on Twitter or are fans of a site on Facebook then they are more relevant to me than another brand who happens to have more links.

Optimising for social search

Take a look at the data points Google is using and make sure you are making attempts to increase your followers, subscribers & friends in each of those areas. It’s not easy for brands to be social but those that manage it are likely to reap the rewards.

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Optimising for Google Social Search

Related posts:

1. Google Talks Marketing Implications of Social Search
2. Will Google Buzz Change the Social Media Game?
3. Is Google Bad at Social Media or Really, Really Good at it?
4. Gmail Search Becomes More Like Google Search
5. Customer Connections Now Important for Google Results
6. Google Launches Social Search
7. Consumers Are Looking for Offers on Social Networks
8. Social search and Sidewiki – not game changing, but the game is changing
9. Google Social Search Now Live
10. Google Launches Social Search Experiment
11. Social is Only Going to Become More Important to Search
12. Start optimising your one-line sitelinks