About the Author: Jason Small is a digital marketer with 10+ years of digital experience working with 20+ brands via various agency roles. Small's expertise includes broad digital strategy, social media strategy, SEO, website design and development and he has led teams to produce results for brands online such as Peoples Choice Awards, ChapStick, Centrum, Dial, Honeywell, Renuzit, Castrol, Sears, Hertz, CoverGirl, John Deere, Advil, ThermaCare and more. As Director of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development for a fifty-person startup, Small led initiatives uniting value propositions and technology across 10+ companies while generating press in trades like TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal.
Google Social Search
Jason Small | Nov 03, 2009 | Comments 3
As the lines between search engines and social networks continue to blur, things are getting interesting. Consider, as most of you already know, that Google is the #1 online destination and that Facebook is now #2 (at the time of this writing as per Alexa rankings) so both giants have the world’s best platforms for their particular category. The final piece of the current puzzle involves figuring out how to leverage the power inherent in both companies’ respective platforms in a way that shows users their first online destination should be one or the other. Or does it?
Google Social Search
In short, do you start your day with Facebook or Google? Will the two start adding features the will start to really challenge the way the current landscape looks? Well, Google is now allowing users to opt-in to Social Searches and we are pretty certain a few people noticed.
Google is now releasing testing for opt-in users to try Google Social Search. The power of this new feature lies in the value we each place in the opinions of our friends.
Suppose you are looking to buy a car from a local dealer. You Google your town and the name of a particular car dealership, let’s say “Good Guys Auto Sales.” After you type that information into Google, it returns your standard results – but now, thanks to Social Search, it also looks at your Gmail account, and other social networks you have in your Google account such as FriendFeed or Twitter. If someone in your network has a blog, previous tweet, or other such content on the web relating to your search – you will see it in the results. Now, you can turn to this person in your social network and read their opinion on the particular product, service, or particular information you are researching.
Confused? This great video from Google explains it in simple terms. If you want to opt-in and start using Social Search (it’s kinda fun), go to Google Experimental and click on “Join the Experiment.”
Jason Small
Social Media and the Big W
Founder
www.SocialMediaandtheBigW.com
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Google+
Hey, Great blog you have here. I wanted to let you all know that I think Twitter is going to be one of the stronger networks because of the fact that it is supported by so many industries. I also think when Twitter shows some of it’s new features, returning traffic will increase to show the real growth of the network.
Anyway, I build a blog that offerers great resources for Twitter that are 100% free, so come and visit and don’t be a stranger.
Keep up the good work!
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[...] Back in November, Google has released a social search featured – obviously recognizing that search engine results that can be drawn from your personal social circle are more likely to be trusted. In other words, if you search for a product, restaurant, or other information and someone in your social circle has already posted something related to your search in a Tweet, or in another social media network – your search results would show the ‘friend’ in your social circle and what they posted about the topic/place/product. Now, you have a personal connection with the information and more reason to trust it. Read more about Google’s Social Search. [...]