Google has started to rollout their new Social Search system, the basic principle behind the new system is to customize the results you see based on the people in your social network. Google have been trialling the new system since October as an opt-in Google Labs experiment and will be available to all Google users in the next few days.
You maybe wondering what is new with Google Social Search, well firstly there is a Social search dashboard which shows not only a list of everyone in your social circle and how you’re connected to them but it also shows a list of your own content that appears in other users social search results.
The Dashboard will contain two tabs
‘Social Circle’ which is the network of connections Google uses to identify relevant social search results based on a combination of  your Google chat buddies, links listed in your profiles and your networks secondary connections.
The second tab ‘Social content’ will show your content that is showing in your buddies search results.
Having reviewed some screen shots of the system before its launch it appears to still be missing a way to clean up or remove your contacts so you still need to ensure your careful with who you add to your social circle.
Social search optimization will be something that all major online marketing companies will be focusing on. Two quick ideas that come to mind at present are that it would be beneficial to build your Google profile with as much information of the social networking sites you use. And secondly try to make more connections with people using the Gmail network as this appears to get priority on the dashboards list of contacts.

So basically if you want your content to appear in more search results you need to grow your network and update your information as much as possible. I’m sure there are loads of other influencing factors that will have to be taken into consideration, but we will have to wait to see the full version of the system to establish what these maybe.

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