Firstly, let's answer the question, what is Google Social Search?
While using Google some of the answers displayed after you enter a search query are "Results from people in your social circle". Let's break this down a little further. These results are from people you are in contact with either on Twitter, Gmail, Google Buzz etc. The purpose behind this is that you might want to read and find out info from people you are in contact with and therefore trust, rather than information provided by strangers. The reasoning behind this rungs quiet deep. Search has been constantly changing and people now want to know what is the best camera to buy from their Twitter and Facebook friends. Search has been evolving and so has Google. So when your type a search query and a social friend of yours already has a blog post of a Twitter update that is relevant, it shows up in your Google search results. So in addition to the usual Google results, you also see relevant results from people in your social circle.
What kind of content is in Social Search?
- Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends' Google profiles
- Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from links that appear in the Google profiles of your friends and contacts.
- Images posted publicly from members of your social circle on Picasa Web and from websites that appear on their Google profiles
Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions
Who is in my social circle?
- People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers groups in your Google contacts
People you're publicly connected to through social sites, such as Twitter and FriendFeed, that appear on your Google profile or in your public Google Buzz stream.- People you’re following in Google Reader and Google Buzz
- People who are connections of those in your immediate, public social circle. This means that if you have a friend on Twitter, and he follows five people, those additional five people may also be included in your social circle.
Google Social Search is going to become more and more important as more and more people are connecting to each other and the basic thing being that you trust someone your in touch with and also if you have any queries about information or anything else provided, you can always get in touch with them easily and get your question answered.