Posted by & filed under Codastar News.

Last week, The Telegraph reported that Google’s social search has now been launched across 19 other languages. But what does this mean and why should businesses care?

Despite the fact social search has been recently rolled out in different languages, in actual fact it’s been available in the UK for the past few years. However, many people still don’t know it exists or understand why it’s so important to them as businesses and individuals.

Social search means that when someone searches for something normally in Google they will not just get the usual results, they will also get results based on the news and content their network of friends has been sharing.

Here is an example of a Google search for the contentious term “super injunction” which is bound to show up in search results a lot today:


google-social-search

As you can see at the top there are several realtime results, which display content that’s relevant to the search term that has also been created very recently.

Below is a normal news story and then below that are news stories that have been shared amongst my network of friends on Twitter, along with details about their username and when they shared the content below.

Google doesn’t automatically know who your followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook are, in order for social search to work a user needs to be signed into their Google account.

The merge of search activity and social media activity is a significant development for anyone thinking about an online marketing strategy for their business, because they are no longer separate or distinct functions. For instance, good online content can be created in an attempt to get people to share it, which will impact on search rankings.

One of the key things to remember is that good content is important and now more than ever the focus is on creating quality content that people will want to share. The more people share your content the more their network of friends will see it on Twitter, as well as when they turn to Google for a regular search.

As well as creating good content it’s important that people are given ways to share it in their preferred method. For instance, someone is much more likely to share one of your blog posts if there’s a “share to Twitter” or “share to Facebook” button at the side.

Get in touch with Codastar today to discuss how we can optimise your content for social search and ensure you give users plenty of ways to share it amongst their networks.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *