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Oct 27
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Google Social Search is a very new feature of Google. The intention is to increase your personal trust level by including what you friends and aquaintances have said about the topic you are searching for.
Say what?! Let me break it down a little deeper for you.
If you are a regular person looking for info by doing a Google search, Google has always wanted to give you exactly what you are looking for. That does not always happen – but now Google wants to help increase “word of mouth” from your social circle in the hopes that you will trust what they have said more than what Google says in the results.
It turns out, that it may be useful to you if info on a restaurant you are interested in was reviewed by your cousin. People trust their people’s opinions more than what some random search engine, right? So, if you are typing the name of the restaurant and hit enter, and if you happen to be logged into Google, and you happen to have added your cousin into your gmail contact list or chat list - you will see social search results at the bottom of your page, where one click shows what your cousin wrote.
Of course, Google still maintains control of the page of results. They will still send you paid ads and hope you click on those, and still shows the top 10 search results which are determined through their algorhythm. And then, if Google determines that your cousin’s info is relevant, they may or may not show it at the bottom of the page. Depends on their, cough, algorhythm, cough.
And, in the end, is Google doing this to keep people on their page instead of using Bing or Yahoo for relevant search results? Probably. Also, there is that Big Brother feeling in my gut. To see the social circle results, one has to have a Google email account, a Google Profile, and Google Reader is thrown in also. And, you have to be logged in. So, not only do they know who you are, they know what you are doing at all times. The announcement came with many statements of how using social search is optional, and only at your permission, and could be changed by you at any time.
Perhaps this is why all of this is still in the Google Labs as an experiment for now.
