Google announces Social Search at Web 2.0 Summit

Top Search Engine Google Burrows into Social Media

It’s no secret that Google is the number-one search engine… and it wants to remain that way. With today’s continuing surge in popularity among social networks like FaceBook and Twitter, Google is trying to establish inroads by capitalizing on what it does best. At the recent Web 2.0 Summit, Google announced an upcoming product called Social Search. According to Thomas Claburn of InformationWeek, Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer says Social Search reflects the need for real-time information and is an example of Google’s dedication to search innovation.
The product will be launched as a Google Lab experiment in just a few weeks, and it is designed to work by integrating information created by a person’s Google Contacts. With Social Search, this information will then show up in Google search results.
Claburn reports that, for the new product to work, users must have an account with Google, a Google Profile, and friends in their Google Contacts list.
The article in InformationWeek cites this example of Social Search’s capabilities shown at the Summit: a search for the term “New Zealand” returned results with relevant, friend-created content about midway through the results page. Included among search results were a FriendFeed entry and links to a Gmail message that referenced New Zealand, each result created by a different friend.
Another interesting tidbit from Claburn’s article: Google has officially reached a deal with Twitter to include tweets in the Google search index in order to improve real-time information access.
We’ll see where this all goes.