Google Social Search now pushes Twitter, Flickr friends
updated 01:20 pm EST, Thu February 17, 2011
Google Social Search updates
Google on Thursday made a significant change to its Social Search to better bring in social networks. The engine now pushes videos and other content recommended by friends depending on their relevance through outside sites, such as from Twitter, Flickr or a Blogger page. It had previously only pulled the information from a Google profile and often let the results sit at the bottom.
Searchers also now have more control over how accounts are linked. Twitter and other sites have always been linked in the public profile, but it's now possible to keep links private for those who don't want to reveal all their social connections and have them turn up in friends' searches.
The changes are taking effect immediately but will at first only apply to the US Google site in English.
Conspicuously absent is Facebook, whose fight with Google over data exporting has led the two to isolate each other from search results.
