Google Social Search
Google Social Search is a feature designed to help you discover relevant publicly-accessible content from your social circle, a set of online friends and contacts. The idea is that content from your friends and social contacts is often more relevant to you than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from your best friend can be even better. Watch a video overview of Social Search
What kind of content is in Social Search?
If you're signed in to Google, you might see social search results for a particular search at the bottom of the results page under "Results from people in your social circle." All the content shown within Social Search is publicly-available online through Google and other search engines. Social Search simply highlights content from your social circle to provide a personalized search experience. Here are some of the types of content you might see:
Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends' Google profiles Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles Images posted publicly from your social circle on Picasa Web and from websites linked from their Google profiles Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions
If you only want to see such results from people in your social circle, click Show Options at the top of the search results page to open the Options panel. Then click Social to filter your results.
Who is in my social circle?
Your social circle is essentially a group of connections including these contacts:
People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers groups in your Google contacts People you're publicly connected to through social services that you've listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed People who are contacts of those in your immediate social circle
See a list of your social circle connections at google.com/s2/search/social. That page shows your direct connections, secondary connections (friends-of-friends), and some of the content that each of those connections has published publicly to the web. You can also reach this page by clicking the link next to "Results from people in your social circle" on any Google search results page that's showing social search results.
See how to change and troubleshoot your social circle You control who is part of your circle. If you want to add or remove someone from your social circle, here are your options:
Add or remove the person from the social networks linked to your Google profile Add or remove links on your Google profile Add or block the person in your Gmail chat contact list Add or remove the person from your Friends, Family, or Coworkers groups in your Google contacts
If someone you don't know shows up in your social search results, it's likely that they're connected to someone you do know. For example, if you're following someone on Twitter, and that person is following five other people, those five other people are also included in your social circle. To see where each connection comes from, view the text on the search results page that says "Connected through [person] on [service]." If you expect to see someone in your social circle but they don't appear on your list, here are some possible reasons:
The person doesn't have a Google profile with links to social content or doesn't have any content that's publicly-available Your list hasn't been updated. (Your social circle display is a snapshot in time, so the person might not show on your list until the data is updated in a couple of weeks.) Your list is not displaying all contacts because your social circle is very large.
To learn more about the details on Social Search, click one of the links below. Why don't I see social results? You may not see social results for a number of possible reasons:
You need to be signed in to your Google Account to see social results. Your social circle may be small because you or your contacts are not connected through many online social services. Your network of contacts may not publish very much web content. You may not be searching for subjects on which your social circle has written content. Your Google language preference needs to be set to U.S. English and you need to search on Google.com. If your Google Account is based on a non-Google email address, you might not have any contacts available. If you recently added new links to your profile, know that it may take a couple weeks or longer for your social search results to reflect the new contacts and content.
How do I improve and customize my social results?
You can improve your social search results by expanding your social circle and encouraging your friends to publish content online: 1. Expand your public connections: o Create a Google profile. o Add links to your public social sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, etc. By linking your public connections on other social sites with your Google Account, you're telling Google just whose content you're interested in seeing in your social search results. o You can also add links to your public content so that others who follow you can see that content in their social search results. 2. Add friends and contacts: Add people who you want to include in your social circle to the Friends, Family, or Coworkers groups in your Google contacts. Any public content that those people have linked to their Google profile can start showing for your relevant searches. Note that it may take up to a few weeks for new connections to start showing in your social search results. 3. Subscribe to interesting content: Add subscriptions to Google Reader. Google will algorithmically select relevant content to show in your social search. Only you have access to your Reader subscriptions. Will my content be shown to other people? Social Search will only show content that is publicly available to anyone on the Internet. As a content creator, you can choose what content to make public. To see a list of your content that might be shown to people in your social circle, visit the "Social Content" tab at google.com/s2/search/social. The content shown there mostly comes from the links you've added to your Google profile, and it only includes whatever content is searchable and included in the Google index. To make yourself more discoverable in social search results, create or improve your Google profile. Then do the following:
Add links to content you want to share, such as your blog or YouTube channel. Publish additional web content and make sure it's all linked to your Google profile.
When you add new links to your profile, it may take a couple weeks (or longer) for your social search results to take new contacts and content into account. Remember that the social search results you see are personalized just for you. Other people will not see the exact results that you see because they'll be shown content from their own social circle. If you don't want to see social search results, you can simply sign out of your Google Account.