Google Brings Social Search Feature with 'Search, plus Your World'

Google is transforming its search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. Google has introduced a social search feature “Search, plus Your World” to its users. It actually merges Google’s social networking initiative Google+ and general web results, which provides more personalized, more relevant streams of results, that’s rich with people and information. Google is taking a big step in the social search by introducing three new features to its famous search engine.

Google brings social search feature Search, plus Your World
Google brings social search feature Search, plus Your World (Click image for fullsize)
  1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
  2. Profiles in Search, both in auto complete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
  3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind almost every query is a community.

Announcing new search features Amit Singhal on the official Google blog says, “Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. 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.”

This new search feature comes with unprecedented security, transparency and control. Search plus Your World can only be access when a user sign-in to one’s Google account, as Google will turn on search via SSL by default for signed-in users, making the search more secure and more security on the private contents on Google+ shown on search results. So when you’re signed in to Google, your search results—including your private content—are protected by the same high standards of encryption as your messages in Gmail.

Google also introducing a prominent new toggle on the upper right of the results page where users can see what they search results look like without personal content. With a single click, users can see a unpersonalized view of search results.

Google social search toggle Button
Google social search toggle Button

Google is rolling out the new Search plus Your World to people around the globe who are signed in and searching on https://www.google.com in English. Together, with social features and general search combine to create Search plus Your World. Search has become simply better with the social world in it, and Google just getting started.

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