Google just did it again. They managed to bring out an innovative shortcut to prevent a threat. This time the threat of social search, at least they try a bit. Let’s start this post of with a quote: The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he never existed… (feel free to comment the movie).
Vertical Search
The first time Google created a smart shortcut, was by working on Universal Search. This was a good way of coping with the first threat of vertical search. By providing the best mixed search results on the normal result page they kept people on their platform instead of seeking other platforms. Think of all travel comparison engines, the local stuff. By implementing it on the usual SERP’s they aren’t losing that much traffic because people stay happy.
Social Search
For quite some time a lot of people have been talking about ’social search’. This should be the next search style, think of it like search 3.0 where your close group of friends are your best providers for information. Think of a comparison and recommendation engines with only people you know and trust.
Now Google pulled another great trick. They launched a kind of widget. This widget could have the power of MyBlogLog, Facebook, Myspace and every recommendation/comparison engine combined. Great thinking Google!
Now what’s going on? Google Friend Connect let’s people connect on their websites with a widget. Now with this widget you could give reviews about that page, send it to other, related, pages, actually all the cool stuff you could need building a social search platform. This way users don’t need to go to the other platform but can directly ask their friends for help. This way Google gets the world information, uses your friends to get the most trustful recommendation, because, who would lie to his friends?
This is not yet availabel to the public you need to request for an invite. But lets not forget that G will also be using this for their algo, they want to see which website has a lot of activity and has user interaction on the site.
For a typical small business web owner this should be a great platform to use. There is no custom coding need, in a matter of minutes you can set up rates and review for your site as well as have your visitors upload their images to your site.