Google launches Social Search

Google has launched Social Search, which allows users to include information from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter on their search results.

Once a user has added their friends’ social network profiles to their iGoogle profile they can get results from social network updates at the bottom of a search results page.

However, Social Search only works with content that is publicly available so will not be able to show much of the content on Facebook as it is behind privacy walls.

Maureen Heymans, Google technical lead, and Murali Viswanathan, Google product manager, wrote on the official Google Blog: “The way we do it is by building a social circle of your friends and contacts using the connections linked from your public Google profile, such as the people you’re following on Twitter or FriendFeed.

“The results are specific to you, so you need to be signed in to your Google Account to use Social Search.

“If you use Gmail, we’ll also include your chat buddies and contacts in your friends, family, and coworkers’ groups. And if you use Google Reader, we’ll include some websites from your subscriptions as part of your social search results.”