spreading jam

We’ve been noticing recently that every few weeks another change to Google has it showing up more social media sites in their results. We thought we should list some of the key ways that social media and search are converging.

1. Live search
Google & Bing have signed deals with Twitter to include live search results from the micro blogging platform in their results (link). This is just another sign of how Twitter’s influence is extending much further than just tweople who actively use the site to the millions of users who run Google searches every day.

2. Forums being highlighted in Google results

Forum posts related to your search are now shown to help people find real people’s opinions on a topic or brand (link). This reflects how people are using the Internet more and more to find what people discussing to get real-life tips and advice. The above screenshot shows the results for the search [getting from Rome to Florence].

3. Filtering of Google results

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that on Googles results page it now has a “show options” button on the left which allows you to filter your search down to Videos, News, Blogs or Forums (link). This allows anyone looking for information to quickly find it in the format they want, add in their time options and in seconds you can have yesterday’s blog posts about X-Factor if you so desire.

4. Blog posts
We’re not really sure what determines when this happens, but we have noticed that at the bottom of some search results it brings in results from Blog Search, see this example for a search for a “Smashing magazine”

Take all this into account along with some aspects that have been around for some time:
5. YouTube Videos appearing in search results
6. Yahoo! Answers and Wikipedia being regulars in the first page of results
7. Google maps including UGC restaurant and pub reviews

It shows how everyones comments, blogs, posts and reviews from across the social web can be quickly and easily found by virtually anyone. Just goes to show how you need to watch what you say but then so do brands if they want to truly understand their customers.