by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media
Google is taking personalized search to a new level by adding information from what Google calls your “public social graph” and integrating it into their main search results. Google is taking everything they know about you from your Google profile, determining your connections with people and websites from various social networks, and then producing personalized search results for participants. What this means for SEO is that all of the social media profile building you’ve been engaged in is going to pay off in the near future — and big.
Since Google Social Search relies on information from your social connections and mines that data, you will first need to opt in to the program through your Google account at http://www.google.com/experimental/. Once you have opted in, conducting a search on Google will provide you with two ways of viewing the Social Search results. The first way is at the bottom of any regular results page you will see “Results from people in your social circle for” where two Google Social Search listings will be returned.
Second, if you perform a search on Google and then select the “Show options” feature and choose “Social” you will see the full Google Social Search results.
The argument for social search is that, because you trust the connections you’ve established, who better to help refine or improve results than members of your social graph? Let’s say I am in Louisville and thinking about going to a specific restaurant. I could perform a social search on Google to view friends’ tweets on the restaurant or perhaps a review on Yelp. This could potentially be very useful for any buying decisions made online or offline, whether they are big or small.
The rest of the story next week.
Google is taking personalized search to a new level by adding information from what Google calls your “public social graph” and integrating it into their main search results. Google is taking everything they know about you from your Google profile, determining your connections with people and websites from various social networks, and then producing personalized search results for participants. What this means for SEO is that all of the social media profile building you’ve been engaged in is going to pay off in the near future — and big.
Since Google Social Search relies on information from your social connections and mines that data, you will first need to opt in to the program through your Google account at http://www.google.com/experimental/. Once you have opted in, conducting a search on Google will provide you with two ways of viewing the Social Search results. The first way is at the bottom of any regular results page you will see “Results from people in your social circle for” where two Google Social Search listings will be returned.
Second, if you perform a search on Google and then select the “Show options” feature and choose “Social” you will see the full Google Social Search results.
The argument for social search is that, because you trust the connections you’ve established, who better to help refine or improve results than members of your social graph? Let’s say I am in Louisville and thinking about going to a specific restaurant. I could perform a social search on Google to view friends’ tweets on the restaurant or perhaps a review on Yelp. This could potentially be very useful for any buying decisions made online or offline, whether they are big or small.
The rest of the story next week.
