Social Search - The Race

Nic posted yesterday about the social search space. I'd highlighted one of the companies he mentioned in an earlier post, Nsyght. I tend to follow the search space closely and have wondered out loud "why isn't google leveraging social input" to further tweak their algorithms? It appears I won't have to wait long to see what Google is cooking up:

This Google experiment page isn't active yet, so you can't use it, but does describe how social ranking works.

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.

The same way that the YouTube video ads are very primitive, expect to see the social tweaking component of Google's results become more sophisticated...

Comments

[Phillip Hofmeyr]

Hi Jason,

Noticed from the Google experiment page that although they require you to be signed in they are not leveraging the power of the social network. Like you, we think search needs fixing. Rather than focusing on the search algorithm (we're leaving that to the PHDs), our approach (via collaborative filtering) is to use the opinions of friends in your network and like-minded people to help our users find reliable information. We launch early next year and wondered if you'd be interested in being a beta tester so that you can get a better idea of how it works?

Regards,

Phil Hofmeyr
co-founder
www.snagsta.com