Yesterday, Google announced the introduction of Google Social Search. This service is available as part of a new experiment on Google Labs and getting started is pretty simple and straightforward. Login to your Google account and join the experiment christened “Google Social Search” – your job is done.

I honestly believe that the name is a bit misleading, especially in the present context and time. Real time search and social (read twitter) search have been widely discussed and talked about topics recently, and one may take Google Social Search to be related to real time search or twitter search. Well, Google Social Search has nothing to do with real time search or twitter search.

For people who are missing out on the background information here – last week Bing rolled out Bing Twitter Search which made it possible for people to search twitter in ‘almost’ real time. Soon thereafter, Google announced a similar deal with Twitter signaling that a Google Twitter Search engine is in the offing and may potentially be broadened in scope to function as real time search engine. With these developments closely preceding the launch of Google Social Search, it is all but normal for people to start associating Google Social Search with real time or twitter search when it is not so. I wouldn’t blame them if they did!

According to Google, the pretext of launching Google Social Search is that “Your friends and contacts are a key part of your life online. Most people on the web today make social connections and publish web content in many different ways, including blogs, status updates and tweets. This translates to a public social web of content that has special relevance to each person. Unfortunately, that information isn’t always very easy to find in one simple place.”   In short, Google Social search is meant to enable you to find material published by people you know (related to in online social circles) easily.

Since Google Social Search is an opt-in feature, you need to sign in to start using it – having a Google profile is a must. . After signing up, you will have a new filtering option called “Social” under web options. Clicking on this option will refine the search results to include relevant information published by your friends and contacts.

Google Social Search

The Google Social Search system essentially collects information from your Google profile, Google contacts, Google reader subscriptions, and other social networks powered by Google (Friendfeed).  It may also include multilevel associations like friend of a friend when presenting relevant information.

All in all, Google Social Search has added a cool new dimension to search and personalization of search.

Google Social Search is definitely a brand new way to find material published by people you associate to and “trust”.