Google starts testing social search

BEIJING, Oct. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Google announced an experimental Labs feature that will peruse a user's social networks for search results, following up on last week's announcement that Google and Twitter had established a partnership.

"Today we're rolling out a new experiment on Google Labs called Google Social Search that helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle," said the company in a blog posting Tuesday.

Google users can create a profile and add in links to social networks they want covered, such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, as well as Gmail contacts. The search results will then include a scan of those sites for relevant information.

The search results will not include private data, "You can find it without Social Search if you really want to. What we've done is surface that content together in one single place to make your results more relevant," Google said.

Last week, Microsoft and Google said they would incorporate Twitter posts in Bing and Google.com search results. Microsoft's Bing search engine started social networking searches last week.