Google announced an important update to their social search function today. They’ll be indexing Flickr, Quora, and Twitter into their search results— and they are no longer at the bottom- they will be mixed throughout (which has marketing-related implications I’ll save for another post).

I’m posting mostly for my friends whom I bet close to 50% of them don’t even know that Google launched  “social search” function in 2009 here .

Meaning, when you search for info in Google, some results are served up to you from the people you interact with in your online social circles.

Why?

Because relationships are relevant.  Online social networks have changed our behavior over the past few years.  We’ve gotten to used to searching, consuming and sharing  information fed to us through social networks, like Facebook and Twitter and blogs. (ie: for those of us who actually use the Facebook platform for searching/ sharing/consuming info vs. stalking)…Google knows that; so they’ve integrated our opinions into your search to be more PERSONALLY relevant for you.

It’s pretty cool if you trust opinions and news shared by your friends. If you don’t, you might want to rethink who you interact with on a regular basis within your social networks so they wont show up in your Google search results!

The short post/video below from Google explains it. Oh, and apologies in advance if I come up in your search results when you weren’t expecting it–let’s call them “socially amplified opinions”.