Introducing Google Social Search

Google Experimental Labs is currently running Google Social Search. The purpose of this tool is to bring you and your social circle closer together. I guess the end goal is that there will be nothing you don’t know about your friends, what they’ve been up to or what they’ve been saying!

Google Social Search plugs into your Twitter and FriendFeed accounts and sifts through content based on what people have been talking about. This seems like another function that’s moving you closer to Google Wave, with everything happening seamlessly in one window of information.

On the basis of a quick test drive, it seems a nice way of keeping search results separate from websites. In order to get the best out of this tool your Google profile needs to be regularly updated with the following information:

• People you’re connected to through social services that you’ve listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed
• People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
• People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers contact groups for Google.

Here is a nice video from Matt Cutts explaining how it works:

[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpTjP6h6Ms” title=”How Google Social Search Works” description=”Matt Cutts from the search quality team explains how Google Social Search works.” upload_date=”2009-10-09″ thumbnail=”8742″ loop=”no” muted=”no” /]