22 Oct 10

Google search getting more social

By Vik Kathuria, MediaCom Interaction

Read the full article at SearchEngineLand

In response to Bing's new inclusion of Facebook links within search results, Google is testing out their own version of social with brand new elements appearing in results from this week (screen shots in the article). The key difference between this social search trial for Google vs. Bing is that Google shows comments/links shared by everyone, on all social networks, while Bing just shows content from your known friends on Facebook,  the latter being arguably more personalised.

When a user clicks on the "Shared by" link, it takes you to Google Realtime search, where users are shown people who are sharing the news story through social sites like Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace... The "Recent Updates" box may appear below the news section on a given search, which also takes you to Google Realtime search, but this time shows what people are saying about the topic instead of the links they are sharing about it.

It will be interesting to watch the roll out of the test and which topic areas are included.