14 DAY TRIAL // Google is finally rolling out its Social Search feature to more places around the world. While it has been available on the main search site, it's now becoming available in 19 more languages on the localized versions of the search engine.
Social Search emphasizes results from your friends and contacts and also surfaces content that your friends like.
"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," Yohann Coppel, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.
"Today, we’re bringing Social Search to more users around the globe," he announced.
"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," he explained.
"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," he added.
Google looks at a variety of sites, including its own, to determine who is linked to you and which content you would trust more. It builds a social circle based on data from Google Reader and Gmail, but also from public data on Twitter, Flickr and, to a degree, even Facebook.
The result should be more relevant results that are much better catered to your particular needs. Google has been working on Social Search for quite a while now and the feature is more than a year old on the main site.
Bing revealed a very similar feature in partnership with Facebook earlier this week. Having Facebook on its side, Bing can integrate Like data and your and your friends' interests with the search results ranking.
Google is missing much of that Facebook data, but it's casting a much wider net, which could work out in its advantage. Google recently launched the +1 button for search results to counter the Facebook Like button. The company said the +1 button is going international soon as well.