Google social search – focus your (re)search

With Google Social Search (still in experimental stage at the moment), we get another step closer to being connected to one another via social networking sites. Once you’ve told Google about some of your relationships, in addition to getting your standard results from a search, you’ll get a section showing results from items your friends or colleagues have posted within Twitter, Facebooks, Blogger, etc.

Google’s demo of the new functionality shows how you can search for a restaurant or holiday destination and get relevant recommendations from blog entries or reviews that friends have posted, but this also has rather exciting possibilities for research. Consider subscribing to a number of blogs & news feeds from preferred experts & colleagues in your chosen field of expertise and being able to search within these.

Making your chosen social networking sources searchable goes another step further towards increasing the usefullness of social networking and gives people another reason to use social networking sites as a broadcasting channel.

You can watch Google’s guide from You Tube below: