Google has begun offering users ‘personal results’ alongside its standard search results, as the internet giant continues its efforts to rival Facebook as the dominant social media destination.
From this week in the US, Google will pluck only the results most relevant to each user, not just from billions of Web pages but from the personal information shared with contacts on its Google+ social network.
New services will incorporate results from a user’s friends and profile in the social network Google+, as well as people, pages and profiles in a user’s network or adjacent to it.
The service will only work if a user is signed in to their Google account, and a new button on the search results page will allow people to toggle between results from the web and from what Google is calling “Your World”.
Writing in a blog post, Google Fellow Amit Singhal wrote that “Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search”.
He added that “These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.”
Singhal said that the change was “transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships”.
The moves build on Google’s existing ‘social search’ feature by adding the contents of Google+, including photos and posts.
Search results will easily be added to Google+, too. Similarly, new searches for topics will lead to prominent people who frequently discuss such matters on Google+.
Singhal wrote that “Search plus Your World will become available over the next few days to people who are signed in and searching on https://www.google.com in English”.
View a video explaining how the service works below:
