Google is taking the bold step of changing the way it displays search results
as part of an ongoing effort to become more social. The move could
enable Google finally to offer a meaningful challenge to Facebook by
tapping its powerful search abilities—provided, of course, that people
decide to use it.
The new features, styled Search plus Your World, were announced on a blog post
today and come in three prongs. The first is the inclusion of “personal
results” in the return to search queries. These results are based on
what a user has shared through pictures on Picasa and on Google+ posts.
To illustrate how the new results can work, Google offers the example of
a search for “chikoo,” which is a fruit from India and also the name of
an employee’s dog. For the employee, a personal search will reveal pics
and posts of the pooch alongside the ordinary results about the fruit:
The second item in Google’s new bag of tricks is a new type of search results that can flush out friends who have common names. For instance, Ben Smith is the name of a political journalist, an NHL hockey player and a Google staffer. The latter person will appear at the top of the results page for those connected to him through Google+ or on Picasa.
...
The final new feature is called People and Places and aspires to offer a sense of community by returning a list of new connections in response to generic queries like “music” or “baseball.” The company’s blog post suggests a search for music will bring up Google+ posts from the likes of Snoop and Britney Spears. Google appears to be betting big on this feature, as it is giving it significant new real estate on the right side of its results pages.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-google-shakes-up-search-results-with-new-your-world-feature
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