Google Makes Search Social; Focus On Building Much Needed Community For Google+

There have been hints from Google about integrating its social media site into search with +1s and linking articles and posts with their writers’ Google+ profiles. But now Google have finally integrated social elements into its search engine.

Announcing it on their blog earlier today, the new features mean that alongside the usual search results you get when you type in a topic, Google have also placed in personal results which correspond with their Google+ accounts.

The logic is that when you’re searching for an article or answer to a topic, you will be more likely to choose a link that has a personal connection, and the best way to achieve that is by integrating Google+ accounts into the search results. Since the site has so many members – mainly because the majority of their members are Gmail accounts holders – the chances of personal results cropping up whenever you search for something is quite high.

Google have split the search up into three main features. The first is ‘Personal Results’ which searches for information relating to you, such as photos, links and posts on your Google+ page. You have the option of deactivating this feature if you do not want your own content to show.

The second is ‘Profiles’ which lets you find people you’re close to or may be interested in following, while the final feature is ‘People and Places’ which lets you find profiles and pages that relate to a specific topic or area of interest. Unlike the first feature, there doesn’t seem to be an option to turn off these features, meaning that you’re stuck with these.

Another feature Google have introduced is the promotion of pages which will now appear on the right hand side of your search. Relating to the words used in your search, it will give you the opportunity to join these groups and connect with like-minded people. However, look into this and it is clear that Google+ are trying to address the problem of community, one that is non-existent. They have the numbers and there are a number of prominent users on the site, yet there’s still a serious lack of interaction among regular users, who are the foundation of any social media site.

A criticism usually directed at Facebook is that it can be quite difficult to retrace old posts. While Google+ has nailed this, Facebook have somewhat dealt with this criticism through Timeline, and these features are another attempt to push Google+ to the forefront of people’s minds. To deal with their competitors, Google+ are pushing the service to show what people are missing out on and since the main thing that they’re missing is community, they need to give people more reasons to use the service.

Google are playing with fire by trying to shoehorn Google+ into the public consciousness. Their previous attempts to integrate the site into their other services haven’t worked too well, and if this doesn’t work out either, then the site could alienate its target audience further. While the signs of success aren’t looking great, Google are determined to push the site further until it’s a genuine competitor with Facebook – the only question now is what else can Google do after this to promote the service.