Google first rolled out their Social Search feature back in 2009, but they’ve just announced a substantial update that will more fully integrate your social search results into normal search results. Now when you view a search results page, your search results will be annotated if they have been shared or liked by your friends… and your search results will even be directly influenced now by how many of your friends have shared and linked a given page.
This is very different than the way Google Social Search used to work: back in 2009 when they service first launched, social results were placed down at the bottom of the page and mainly showed results friends had shared and linked through their Google profiles, a la Google Reader.
Now, however, Google’s plucking their social search data from a bigger ecosystem that includes Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. If someone you’re connected to on any of these sites has shared a link, that link may now show up higher in your results, with an annotation made by that person showing up right beneath the results.
“With these changes, we want to help you find the most relevant information possible, personalized to your interests and the people you care about,” says Google.
The new update will begin rolling out to users today, although it’ll start just in Google’s English results, and it might take a week for you to start seeing your friends’ social sharing habits popping up in your search results.
Needless to say, the new Social Search will only work if Google knows who you are by searching after you’ve logged into your Google account.
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