How To Use Google Social Search to your Advantage

There’s no doubt that we trust our colleagues for business insight, advice, and of course for hot tips on the next big thing. Google Social search taps into this behavior by searching relevant publicly-accessible content from your social circle, a set of online friends and contacts.

You may have noticed content from your social circle at the bottom of your search results page:

According to Google the following are examples of the types of relevant, publicly-accessible content it searches for:

• Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles
• Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles
• Images posted publicly from your social circle on Picasa Web and from websites linked from their Google profiles
• Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions

And Google says it searches the following to make and find connections:

• People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
• People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers groups in your Google contacts
• People you’re publicly connected to through social services that you’ve listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed
• People who are contacts of those in your immediate social circle

As a business owner your wheels might be spinning right now. Entrepreneurs are particularly adept at taking advantage of opportunities and as you can see there are a few ways you can use Google search to your advantage.

1. You can use Google Social Search to keep tabs on your competition. Simply friend your competition via Twitter or FriendFeed and include them in your Google profile or add them to your contacts and now all of a sudden their content is being sent to you automatically.
2. You can also use Google Social Search to stay on top of industry trends by befriending or adding industry gurus to your contacts. Staying on top of industry trends provides food for new content, discussions and even product or service ideas.
3. You can use Google Social Search to position yourself in front of your target audience. Google recommends, adding links to content you want to share and by linking content to your Google profile.

They also say that, “When you add new links to your profile, it may take a couple weeks (or longer) for your social search results to take new contacts and content into account.”

You can also choose what content is made publicly available. To see what content will be seen by your social circle, visit the Google Social Search page and click on the “social tab.”

Google Social Search has all sorts of implications for helping you not only learn and stay ahead of your competition but also to help you connect with your target audience and market your business with quality content.