Google has announced that it is taking its social search functionality global. This means that now also people outside of the US will get more and more socially integrated search results. This goes from the “shared this” functionality to specific blogs, flickr account and other social media from within your social circle.
Social search results in other languages and on other domains are mixed throughout the Google results page based on their relevance. The results will (for now) only be shown to those logged into their gmail-accounts.
The Social Search feature will now be available in 19 languages and should be available in the coming week.
Google made a nice video to explain what social search does:
From the Google blog:
“Google makes a best guess about whose public content you may want to see in your results, including people from your Google chat buddy list, your Google Contacts, the people you’re following in Google Reader and Buzz, and the networks you’ve linked from your Google profile or Google Account. For public networks like Twitter, Google finds your friends and sees who they’re publicly connected to as well.”
I did a presentation at SMX London this week in which I explain that the social search results Google is showing have a much bigger impact than you would expect. Your ‘social circle’ is a lot bigger than you would think. I will do a post on that early next week.
