It’s no secret that the worlds of social media and search are becoming more and more entwined. Today companies are building up there social networking presence to create place where they can communicate with others in the industry as well as clients and potentials. While this in itself is a huge change in mentality for communication, it is also very important in search. 
The various social platforms where people are having relevant conversations about your product also creates a way for people to find you via search. Google is already including the various types of information in what they call Universal Search. This combines all types of media into search results including text, audio, video as well many other areas. You can see a list on the left side of the search results page. Google has taken it a step further though to include people in your “Social Circle.†They call it Social Search.
So, the big question is how do they do that?
Well as we know Google is the king of search so they put their spiders and search abilities to good use.
Here’s a quick list of where they find your social circle:
- People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
- People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers groups in your Google contacts
- People you’re publicly connected to through social sites, such as Twitter and FriendFeed, that appear on your Google profile or in your public Google Buzz stream.
- People you’re following in Google Reader and Google Buzz
- People who are connections of those in your immediate, public social circle. This means that if you have a friend on Twitter, and he follows five people, those additional five people may also be included in your social circle.
Of course you have to be logged into your Google account for it to work. When you do a normal Google search below the normal 10 results you will see something similar to the image below.
Now if you want to see who Google has decided is in your social circle they have created a page that shows a list of your connections and how you are connected to them. Social Circle and Content. You might be surprised at who is on the list.
Google believes their new social search feature will help people find more relevant results when search and results that you trust because they are in your social circle.
