Google Social Search – Ahead of Its Time

Along with the announcement that confirmed Google’s deal with Twitter, Google’s Marissa Mayer spoke last week of an addition coming to Google Labs that contains;

“(…) a new feature that allows you to see results for queries from people in your social network. This works by using your Google Profile. If you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people.”

I have been referring lately to “influence” as a future ranking factor in Google’s search results and the latest announcement indicates that Google is closer than I thought.

Google Social Search Presentation (7:59)

HuoMah SEO Blog has a great take on the importance of Google’s latest announcement.

The Two Main Provisions:

• You need to be signed in to Google
• You need to have a Google Profile

The Social Graph

Social search has been a hot topic for the past year but this is the first time  we have really seen how search engines will get there. The main driving tool behind the scenes is the social graph and the social graph API.

The Social Graph API now makes information about the public connections between people on the Web, expressed by XFN and FOAF markup and other publicly declared connections, easily available and useful for developers.

Brad Fitzpatrick from Google on the Social API (2:36)

The speed at which Google operates always amazes me. They continue to drive their efforts in the direction of the end user and in turn , make it more and more time consuming for an SEO company to do the job that is required of them. But then again, isn’t that what we are paid for.

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