Google has launched its social search tool in 19 new languages, giving users around the world a chnace to refine search results based on friend’s online recommendations.
First launched in October 2009, the tool gives Google account holders suggested connections to those listed as friends on users’ publicly available social network profile information and by crawling their Gmail contacts.
Once these details have been tracked for the first time, search results from social networks will always appear at the bottom of the page with a note of which network the information has been pulled from.
Yohann Coppel, a Google software engineer, wrote on the company blog: “In 2009 we first introduced Social Search on google.com as an experimental feature designed to help you find more relevant information from your friends and the people you care about. Since then we’ve been making steady improvements to connect you with more people and more relevant web results. Today, we’re bringing Social Search to more users around the globe.
“Just like on Google.com, social search results in other languages and on other domains are mixed throughout the Google results page based on their relevance… Social Search can help you find pages your friends have created, and it can also help you find links your contacts have shared on Twitter and other sites.
“If someone you’re connected to has publicly shared a link, we may show that link in your results with a clear annotation. So, if you’re looking for information about modern cooking and your colleague Adam shared a link about Modernist Cuisine, you’ll see an annotation and picture of Adam under the result. That way when you see Adam in the office, you’ll know he might be a good person to ask about his favourite modern cooking techniques.”
Last week, Microsoft deepened its ties with Facebook, giving a greater preference to “liked” search results in Bing’s results ranking. Bing will also calculate how many people in general “like” certain search results, outside of a user’s shere of Facebook friends.
Microsoft, a minority shareholder in Facebook, is betting that data from Facebook will make its search superior to Google’s dominant search engine, which still commands about 65 to 70 percent of the U.S. search market.
Last month, Google launched its own take on social search with Google +1, letting people share their recommendations for websites and online advertisers on search results.