Occasionally, Google will introduce an enhancement to its search engine allowing users to “opt-in” for use prior to releasing the addition live. These enhancements are found in Google Labs (www.googlelabs.com). One current feature in the labs is Google’s Social Search.
Supposedly, Google offers subscribers the ability to search their own networks for relevant results to their query. Those results, in turn, may be given higher precedence than those results returned from outside the user’s network. Notice the word “may.” I’ve yet to see any such results. Perhaps, my network isn’t big enough. However, I would have thought with a few thousand friends, someone’s got to be talking about the same thing(s) for which I am looking. Maybe, we’re just not compatible and I should find new friends.
Or, maybe Google has yet to penetrate the social community for the same issue with which it has always struggled. Furthermore, Google now introduces its own hurdle.
First, why many users are turning away from major search engines and to Twitter for locating news, current events and hot topics is because Twitter offers one thing the major players don’t – real-time search.
Traditional search engines reside on multiple servers. These search providers have a few scavenger servers (crawlers) that visit web sites and store page content in a database. The database must then replicate itself to multiple database servers where the public search engine can access the data and provide its search results. While major news sites may be index quite frequently, the process previously described could still take a few hours to complete. For less popular sites, it may be a matter of days before the site’s information is indexed and an additional 24-48 hours before the content is available for search.
Twitter offers real-time search enabling users to quickly find up-to-the-minute information and news on recent events – sometimes merely a few seconds, literally, after the information is published or the event occurs.
Perhaps as an appeasement to current social users; or, a limitation during an eventual (maybe) migration, Google Social Search’s “fine lines” in its labs description specifies the extent of its returned results.
“Your social circle consists of contacts from Gmail and sites listed in your Google profile.”
There you have it. In order for you to see results from Google’s Social Search, you must either: 1) be a Gmail user; or, 2) set up a Google profile. Could this be a ploy to “encourage” users to go Google? It so, I sincerely doubt it will work.
While there are quite a few people who use Gmail, there are still many more who don’t. As for myself, I have quite a few e-mail addresses and none of them are Gmail accounts.
I do, however, have a Google account, but only because I use tools such as Analytics, Webmaster Tools and Feedburner. Additionally, I’ve taken the time to create my Google profile and added some preferred links. But, I’m sure not everyone who has a Google account has taken the time to manage their profile.
While you and I may have many “friends,” “followers,” “connections,” etc. (take your pick of your preferred network), good luck in finding their information in your search results.
