Google’s Social Search experiment has finally come of age. The online search giant yesterday announced that Social Search results will no longer be relegated to the bottom of Google search pages. Instead, relevant posts from the social media accounts of a user’s friends will now be integrated into the list of results. The social search results include activity on Flickr, Quora, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube which would also play a huge role in determining a site’s page rank.
The most noticeable omission in Google Social Search Results is Facebook. IMO, it’s unsurprising that Google chose to omit Facebook from the scheme of things because the world’s leading search giant and the world’s most popular social network have for long been engaged in a high profile war for control of the Internet.
Google is increasingly getting social
Google’s latest move is a part of its long-term social integration strategy to provide more information from the people they have connected to publicly or privately. IMO, it’s a good move and is likely to benefit users as well as Google. First, it encourages users to sign up on social networks with their Google accounts there by increasing the search giant’s subscriber base. On the other hand, users (especially business users) get high page ranks in search engine results.
Google says social connections can affect the ranking of some search results. Social Search results are clearly marked with a note and a picture, so users can easily recognize whose tweets, LinkedIn profiles or Quora updates they’re looking at.
How to use Google Social Search?
To use Social Search, you’ll need to link your social media accounts publicly via your Google Profile. Alternatively, you can make these connections private with a new setting in your Google account. Google will automatically search for other public accounts you might have and recommend that you link to them. IMO, the private connections feature is much needed and Facebook surely needs to take a few privacy lessons from Google.
The social search results will also include any links that are shared by users in their social media updates. Therefore, it warrants that users be careful about what links they share, or else it may well cause some embarrassment.
Though social search results have existed for quiet some time, they were positioned at the bottom of the page, making them less likely to be noticed.
Google vs. Bing: Why Facebook is excluded from Google’s search results?
Ever since Bing introduced Facebook ‘Like’ Integration, Google abandoned deep Facebook integration, in favor of Quora, Flickr and Twitter. Microsoft has always played a big brother to Facebook. In contrast, Facebook and Google have been at loggerheads at several occasions in the last two years. It would have been nice to have Facebook “likes” included in Google Social Search Results. Perhaps, a classic case of If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
What is your opinion on Google Social Search feature? Would you have like seeing Facebook updates as part of Google Social Search results? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment below this post.
With Google actively working on their own social platform (or so it’s said), it’s really no surprise they chose to omit Facebook.
I personally will not link my social accounts to Google, I like to keep things separated (for now at least), and since I monitor Twitter on my own anyway, I’m comfortable in using Google in a more “traditional” way.
It has been a slippery-slope for Google gaining better traction of the technological social revolution in recent times as evident by its incessant effort to truly compete in the social space, and to retain its position as the web kingpin. The omission of Facebook from its social search engine is a far cry from their mantra of a free web. However, it makes business sence to the them to divert any attention they could give to Facebook somewhere else. Is this a sustainable business strategy? We’d have to wait and see.
Thanks Gabriele for your thoughtful comments as always.
My thought is, considering how deeply dependent on their technologies we all are – at least I am, from a personal and professional standpoint – it’s better to start hoping their strategy will sustain them for a long, long time.
It’s good to have an option to keep things separated. It’s like: do you want to use this intact encyclopedia, or do you want to use this one, which has already been earmarked, highlighted and otherwise tampered with by everyone you know?
Douglas Idugboe – You summarized this very well. The line has to be drawn somewhere. Can’t say “anything goes”. Advertisers who are competing for the same dollar are not expected to intertwine services. Unaffiliated TV and Radio stations have not been heard to promote each other.
You’re right on the money Michael. That seem to be the position Google has taken. We’d have to wait to see if that’s a sustainable business strategy.
Thanks for the comment Michael.
Problem with taking Facebook ‘likes’ into the sum is that everyone has now switched from link swapping to ‘like’ swapping which could tarnish results.
Facebook is too relavent for Google to omit. This move really goes against the standard sentiment of the Internet, and I believe this will backfire for Google.
Facebook is too relavent for Google to omit. This move really goes against the standard sentiment of the Internet, and I believe this will backfire for Google.
No I hate the fact that ANY social media information has page rank capabilities at all, it’s a scam and most people use social networking to cheat with SEO, SEM, get rid of it all, search placement should be based on page onsite data only.
Very useful information! Thank you!
This is yet another reason, why you have to be aware of what you are posting on Social Networking sites. With the most popular Search Engine adding Social Networking into their search capabilities, makes social media even more open of a conversation.
Also, it will make it easier to connect with new people on these Networks. I am curious to see how it all turns out.
I personal think it’s brilliant from a strategic move on behalf of Google. Google is a giant and for those who believe that they need Facebook more than Facebook needs Google than your kidding yourself. Look at the facts…..Google index billions of pages and Facebook has approximately 500 million users. People are always searching for information and yes FB has provided a lot of impressions and in return people take those impressions and do what?? Google! It’s not the other way around. Who Google needs to fear is http://www.stumbleupon.com now they are definitely creeping up to the match of Google. Thanks for sharing Douglas.
I personal think it’s brilliant from a strategic move on behalf of Google. Google is a giant and for those who believe that they need Facebook more than Facebook needs Google than your kidding yourself. Look at the facts…..Google index billions of pages and Facebook has approximately 500 million users. People are always searching for information and yes FB has provided a lot of impressions and in return people take those impressions and do what?? Google! It’s not the other way around. Who Google needs to fear is http://www.stumbleupon.com now they are definitely creeping up to the match of Google. Thanks for sharing Douglas.
I lost interest as soon as I hit the grammatical error in the first sentence.
Thanks for bringing the error to our attention. It has been corrected.
I’d like to see my site FreezeCrowd, which I’m launching soon for college students and alumni work with Google. We’ve got a lot of great things to offer, that the other sites won’t be able to do. How do I get ahold of Google?
Very good explanation of what is going on with the two giants, thanks for the simplification.
Dave
Thx for this post
Also, it will make it easier to connect with new people on these Networks. I am curious to see how it all turns out.
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