Google+ search your world
Recently Google introduced it’s new kind of social search, Search plus your world. It’s the search you know combined with social results from Google+ (due to the fact Twitter didn’t renew it’s contract and Facebook complained).
What is it?
Of course I can explain to you what this search plus your world is, but that would be like reinventing the wheel. I’m not really the one to do things others already have, so check out the video below (from Google). It will explain how search plus your world works and what it does.
So basically all the results from your network are shown among the normal search results. You can quickly switch back to the standard search mode by the icon on the top right.
Good usage examples
So how is search plus your world useful? Good question, but I already figured that part out. I’ll show an example:
You want to watch a movie or buy a new tablet. The first thing you probably do is check out Google and do a decent search on what you want. With the social integration you can easily spot reviews or recommendations from the people in your network.
So people you know and interact with are giving you some advice through search! I think that’s really convenient as I value the opinions from the people I follow and most likely will act on their reasoning more than standard search results. Keep in mind though that “good” usage will be only as good as your network, but I’ll explain that a bit more below.
Pros and cons….
When a new feature gets introduced, people get annoyed. Probably not so much from that new feature but more because of the change of something they’ve known for a long time. That’s stuff I won’t discuss here though. Another post of mine covers that 
. There are a few pros and cons with this new feature however. At least in my opinion!
Firstly the new social search is as good as your network. When you’re following people of interest with a lot of experience and skill it will be more likely they generate relevant search results for you. With a less skilled or non-interesting network, for example when you just follow for the follower count’s sake, you won’t get that relevant results you’re looking for.
Secondly, people without Google+ won’t see social integration in their searches. As far as I can see it’s only G+ that gets integrated. Twitter and Facebook are holding off the boat unfortunately. Social search could be far more useful when these networks are integrated too!
As you can see these aren’t really big cons, for me personally at least. But it can make a difference for other users.
Something I consider a pro is the ability to select what sort of search you want to use default. By clicking on the settings icon you can choose search settings and select to show personal results or not. This way people who don’t like it can easily turn off the service.
Like I stated above, there’s a lot of skepticism around about this new feature. Mostly people that don’t seem to understand what it does. By checking it out a bit more, reading the official blog post I linked above and set the search settings you want, it can easily be modified to your likings. This way it can’t possibly bother you…at least in my eyes.
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