Google and Social Search

Google has announced the latest Google Labs experiment on its official blog. They rolled it out yesterday afternoon, and already there has been lots of discussion in the SEO community on the impact it will have.
Google Social Search is still being developed and experimented on, and I am sure Google have still a lot more to play with and tweak, but essentially it is a another step toward personalising search results for Google account holders.
Google Social Search is essentially connected to your GMail account, social contacts via Twitter and Friendfeed, news feeds, RSS feeds and Google Reader feeds. Great news if you want to connect that missing link to all your online activity via Google and use this feature like a friends network as on Facebook. However, if you do not have many contacts nor followers on Twitter then this latest development is unlikely to be life changing.
I look forward to experimenting with this latest development through Google Labs and comparing my results with the rest of my colleagues results at FirstFound. The indications are clear from Google that it intends to press ahead with personalising search results and in doing do bridging the gap between generic marketing for the masses and personalised marketing for the niche. For now social media seems to be Google’s new darling.