Google Social Search is Live (This is Big)

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Google describes their new social search feature like this:

Google Social Search is an experimental feature that helps you find relevant public web content from people in your social circle, when you're signed in to your Google Account. For example, search for [ restaurants ], and restaurant reviews by your friends and other contacts may appear more prominently in your results.

For now, Google social search will pull info from Twitter, Friendfeed, Blogger, Gmail + Google Chat contacts, Picasa, and Google Reader. One notable exception is Facebook. This is interesting because the benefit for Google to index Facebook updates is obvious: Facebook is the largest social network. However, Facebook recently acquired Friendfeed - so this is something to keep an eye on. The major issue here is that Facebook has not made its status updates "public" and therefore will not be featured in search results.

Google and Facebook are essentially in competition to host the authoritative social profile online. Right now, Facebook is dominating that battle. You might not realize it but Google has its own social network called Orkut. Orkut has failed miserably and will likely be re-fashioned or eliminated at some point. However, Google Social Search will aggregate data from Google Profiles. This qualifies as a major chess move vs. Facebook in the aforementioned profile battle.

How To Get Started with Google Social Search

Step One:

Click over to Google Experimental and select 'Join this Experiment.'

Step Two:

Do a basic search on Google. If anyone within your social network (as deemed by Google) has authored relevant content - it will show at the bottom of your search results. The more comprehensive way to find social results is to click the "'Show options..." feature on the search results page. From the menu, select Social.

Step Three:

Fill out your Google Profile to ensure that your work will also be indexed by Google Social Search.

Extra Credit:

Get a verified name on your Google profile.

Find out how to get a verified name by listening to my appearance on Say It Social's Blog Talk Radio podcast 'Social Fresh with Jason Keath. Google profiles show at the bottom of search results when someone searches for your name. Verifying your name will help you stand out if you have a particularly common name. Special note to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - feel free to ignore step three.

Also, be sure to get a vanity url for your Google Profile.

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