Getting Acquainted with Social Search and My Social Circle
September 2, 2010 in Search Marketing
If you haven’t heard about Google Social Search you may be surprised to see content from friends show up in your Google search results.
For some people, content provided by social contacts may be more relevant than content provided by 3rd party sites. This is where Social Search comes in. A great example of this is when you are looking up a movie review. You may be more interested in hearing what your friend has to think about a movie than what a reviewer from a news organization has to say. With Social Search results showing up on your search results page, you can easily see if a friend has tweeted, posted or blogged their opinion about that movie. Here’s a great overview of Social Search feature from Google:
When do you see Social Search results?
When you are logged into your Google account, you will see Social Search results appear at the bottom of the search results page when conducting searches online. The Social Search feature only shows relevant content created by people in your social circle based on your search query. The results are specific to you and your social circle. Other people will not see the same social search results that you see because it is personalized based on who is in your social circle.
Where do Social Search results appear?
If you scroll down to the bottom of your search results page, you may begin to see Social Search results from your social circle. My recent searches showed a blog post from a business acquaintance and a status update from a friend.
If you like the Social Search feature, you can specify to see additional Social Search results by clicking on the “More search tools” link on the left side of your search results page and selecting “Social”.
Are you in My Social Circle?
People who show up as part of your social circle are your connections from a variety of sources including:
- Your Gmail contacts
- Your Twitter and FriendFeed contacts that may appear in your Google profile or Google Buzz
- Connections of people in your social circle (friends-of-friends)
- People you are following in Google Reader or Google Buzz
It’s easy to find out who is on this list just by going to your Social Circle page. If you’re logged into Google, you can get to this page by clicking the Social Circle link next to “Results from people in your social circle” on any Google search results page that’s showing social search results.
Social Search is just another example of how social media and search marketing are becoming more and more intertwined. If you’d like to check out more tools related to Social Search, check out Marketing Cosmos.
