27 October 2009 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Google announces Social Search

Google has announced its new Social Search feature, which combines results from social networks including blogs, micro-blogging sites Twitter and FriendFeed and photo sharing site Flickr to allow users the alternative of receiving more relevant and personalised search results from their own social circle.

This announcement arrives hot on the heels of Bing's deal with Twitter, and follows Google's half of the arrangement with the popular micro-blogging site to incorporate tweets into search results, fuelling the competition between Google and Microsoft in the search engine field.

Mashable reports that Social Search is currently in its experimental stage, and users can opt in to receive results from their social circle that supplement standard Google search results at the bottom of the page. Google has stated that it has been experimenting with the feature for several months, believing it to be a significant step forward for the search engine.

The Google Labs site promises that Social Search will allow users to: "More easily find relevant blogs, reviews and other public content from your social circle.

"Sign in to Google and do a search. If there's relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called 'Results from people in your social circle.'"

A user's social network is defined by their Google account, which Google explains as "a combination of your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you're publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed)."