Google recently announced that social results are starting to be blended with regular results. For the time being it’s solely operating on Google.com, in English only.
This signals another step forward in the personalisation of its search results, with Google themselves saying “relevance isn’t just about pages – it’s also about relationships”
Previously, these pages only appeared at the foot of the search results, therefore this now represents a new level of personalisation in the format that information is presented to us.
How does it work?
When logged into your Google account with an active Google profile, you can see blended results from other people who might have linked their Google profile to social networks such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Linkedin etc. If you don’t use Google social features such as Google reader, these results shouldn’t appear in your listings. At present, this doesn’t include Facebook likes – even if your Facebook page is linked to your social profile. However this might change in future as Google plans to extend the comprehensiveness of the service. You can also see results from content that has been shared by contacts, even if they did not create the content, thereby increasing coverage significantly.
How to view regular results that have not been ‘socialised’
You must log out of your Google account to allow this to happen, there is no disable feature to prevent results from being blended, whilst logged in.
Social connections potential to boost search rankings
Whilst Google’s current ranking algorithms will continue to determine where a listing should appear, this listing might be enhanced to reflect any social element to it, such as being shared on Twitter. However, this is an entirely personal user experience, based on the relationship between individuals, and hence different people with different social connections, will see a set of results that are most relevant to them.
Where’s this all going?
It’s early days, but already I think certain aspects can be contemplated as to its success in terms of popularity, general influence, and the repercussions for brands to consider its influence when creating content.
One factor it obviously depends on is how many people decide to link their Google profile to social networks such as Twitter and Flickr. Given the historical lack of appetite for other Google social services such as Buzz, it remains to be seen whether people will have the desire to incorporate and share profile information from social networks on Google, or on the whole, will they simply want to continue using Google for what until this point at least, Google has been best at – delivering quality search results (generally speaking, in a non social style)
The ability for information that has been shared by ‘friends of friends’ to appear in the search results, does however provide greater scope for the functionality of this latest incarnation of social search. Coupled with the fact that searches that are well ‘socially connected’ could potentially show up higher in the results, this does throw up another instance of results becoming more personalised, and in theory provides brands with another level in the continual challenge of creating compelling, unique content in order for it to be liked, and thus shared in the social community.
The level of impact this has will likely be felt more in some content areas than others.
Whilst some content might be considered extremely valuable to its own market, the culture of sharing it might not yet exist or at least be in its infancy, and the users who the content is targeted at, might not as yet be at a level where they feel comfortable embracing a service such as Google social search.
With brands to a certain extent being restricted by the human behaviour of their target market, those with followers that are already immersed in the culture of sharing content socially, will no doubt see this as an opportunity to gain further exposure for their brand.
The following months should provide the answers as to whether Google has convinced enough people of its social virtues, an area it could be said to have struggled with in the past. Whatever the outcome, sites that continue to innovate through outstanding content will reap the benefits, be it through social search or via the good old regular search results style.
