Google Introduces New Personalized Search: Bakes Google+ Into It

Google has just updated their search algorithm to serve you some special personalized results. This will pull in Google+ data directly into your search results and the company claims that it will help in making search more personal and rewarding. Google had paved the way to this by introducing ‘Social Search’ some months back. Personalizing search with results pulled in from a social network is not new as Bing and Facebook are also doing the same thing.

How does this service differ from them then?

Google’s personal search upgrade makes it possible for you first search through your own stuff that you have shared on Google+ since people share a lot of their data and stuff on the Internet today. It can thus be used to look up something you might have posted some months ago but are hard put find now. The second advantage is the fact that you can also look at what your friends have shared in context to the search term you enter. Suppose you need to use a photo or a link. It is always better if a friend has shared it since that person is a trusted source rather than some stranger on the Internet, right? You can also see who shared what as their profiles appear in the search results. Brands can benefit from it since whatever they have shared will reach their fans even though they are not actively looking at their pages. The reach of a particular brand or company is bound to increase with this update.

There are also those that argue that personal search is wrong thing. They assert that personal search filters like these are actually blocking you from the complete and open Internet by screening the results and providing you with only what you want. Well, these assertions do have a grain of truth when taken in some contexts but there is a solution to that. ‘Search plus your world’ has an on and off toggle with which you can simply switch between personal and the free and normal web.

Not every one is happy with Google’s new update namely Twitter whose General Counsel, Alex Maxgillivray, a former Google Employee tweeted about how Google is ‘warping’ search results and how it is blocking smaller services from being seen on the web.

Twitter seems to be alleging that this whole thing is unfair. Twitter had a deal with Google earlier where the search giant used to index tweets in their real time search. The deal came to a close on July 2011 and wasn’t renewed as Twitter was asking for a huge amount of $100 million dollars to renew the deal.

Basically, what Twitter is saying that Google shouldn’t make improvements to its search engine simply because Twitter cannot perfect search on its own. Twitter should have renewed the ‘Tweets in Google real-time search’ deal if it was that concerned about its real-time search. Google is not a social service, right? I am having a hard time believing Twitter’s whiny tone.

Google+ might actually gain some traction with this update. My personal view is that content is pretty strong on Google+ while Facebook is flooded by inane chatter. People searching for quality content on Google might just get what they want. Search in India is growing due to the number of people getting introduced to the service everyday. This will surely drive up Google+ sign-ins. I have always contended that Google+ is not a social network per se. It is in fact a social layer and this update makes the whole thing clear. If Google keeps on adding such improvements me may not have to go to ‘social networking site’. We may just get all of it in search.

What do you think about Google’s new personalized results? Share your views with us.