March 28, 2024

Making Google Search Social: Google Plus and Google Search Results Integration

Google has a point to prove with Google Plus and with its faltering social network way behind Facebook; Google has fired its next salvo in the epic battle. As part of this aggressive promotion strategy, Google has launched ‘Search plus Your World’.

What this does is that from now on if you are signed into Google and run a keyword search, the results are going to be personalized for each specific user with results taken from you Google Plus posts and things shared and posted. These results will appear alongside the other search results. Google will also show pictures that have been shared on Picasa and Google Plus.
This is part of the bigger strategy to become your search engine for all your online personal stuff that is available on Google and its sister sites. In the future, results will available from Gmail, Google docs, contacts, music , voice and all the other product of Google’s ecosystem. Some people may not like this as they would want to keep stuff private.
If Google can manage to tie-up third party API providers into this universe, then it could become huge and dominating force. It had tried this with Twitter for a while but the third party providers would be a bit reluctant to give to access to their data. Facebook already has an agreement with Google rival Bing.
If you search for a specific person, an auto complete box will pop down that will also show results from Google Plus. You will be able to view different people with the same name along with their picture, city and a link to their Google Plus profile.
If you search for a specific topic, then the results window will also show people who are active and popular in Google Plus for that specific topic and you can follow them. This feature is more towards engaging with the celebs and the Google Plus community and using your Google Plus account more.
You also have the option of managing the new features introduced. A new tab will allow you to choose if you want to the ‘Search plus Your World’ results or the old results system that is currently available. You also have the option of opting out of the new system totally.
Google has also mentioned that SLL is now the default for all signed in users.
The new features of Personal Results, Profiles in Search, People and Pages in search are part of the overall Google strategy of making search Social.

One thought on “Making Google Search Social: Google Plus and Google Search Results Integration

  1. You know with everything going these days with social and the like, I hate how there is one more thing I have to sign up for an optimize, I wish Google would just stick to search and analytics.

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