As we reported this morning, Google has thrust its social product into its most popular offering, search. Google+, which was once a social network for sharing things with your circles has now become a new algorithm for surfacing search results for the behemoth.
This has a few people crying foul, and I’m one of them. I personally don’t want anything I do on a social network to interfere with my search engine results. I’ve trusted Google for quite some time to make the best guesses on what content will be interesting to me, and they should have just left it alone.
However, we all saw this coming, including Twitter. The company has made an official statement on its feelings about Google surfacing its own social network results above other sites like Facebook and Twitter itself.
For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.
Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.
We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.
Twitter makes an absolutely valid point here when it says that surfacing its own content over trusted publishing sites like Twitter is dangerous for users. A quality tweet losing prominence in search results simply because it wasn’t published on Google’s own social network is absurd.
We’ve reached out to Facebook for a statement and we’ll let you know what they have to say on the matter. As we know, Facebook has its own deal with Microsoft’s search engine Bing, which is second place to Google in the search engine war.
UPDATE: Facebook declined to comment on the matter.
I don't see how it interfere's with your search results? They're allowing you to see search results in two different modes and the non-social mode is less social than the current default mode, i.e. social will interfere less after these changes if that's what you want. I can't understand why you didn't mention this above.
Twitter's statement doesn't make much sense to me. Perhaps they know otherwise, but I don't think many people discover Twitter content through search results; their role in recent political events has been as an open messaging service rather than a news service and it isn't clear how search results will change this.
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LikeGoogle says it themselves in a job posting for an interaction designer: "The mantra of the [Google] User Interface (UI) team is: 'Focus on the user and all else will follow.' "
It seems this is not a clever ploy to assert web dominance (I doubt people will actually stop using twitter and facebook and switch to google+ just because of a new search feature). Rather it is a following a model of pervasive usability, that is a strict focus on improving a product by adhereing to a user centric philosophy.
It has been amazing watching how Google has taken initiative in just the past few years to put their users at the forefront. No longer is it just about improving algorithms for page ranking -- it is about making the web more usable for individuals.
Furthermore, with the over abundance of SEO marketing experts, each trying to push their clients' websites to the top of a Google search, it would be nice to see my top search results filled with results pertinent to me and my life instead of placed there by some company who has successfully trolled their way to the top.
Please, tell me I'm wrong and that this is a bad thing.
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LikeLab Coat Media you are wrong and this is a bad thing.
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LikeI can't stand Twitter - for the most part I find it to be a bunch of useless 140 character short hand messages. Subscribe to a few active people and it just becomes a bloody mess. As for Google implementing social into search results, guess what people, IT CAN BE TURNED OFF WITH A CLICK OF A BUTTON - so get over it! I can't stand these ridiculous articles that 'forget' to mention very important facts, such as that it can be turned off, because the person writing the article is anti-*insert website name here*. If Twitter actually got of it's arse and started to innovate/develop new ideas, instead of just complaining when another company does something it doesn't like, maybe it wouldn't be such a big problem. Apart from changing the UI a number of times, Twitter has done virtually squat in terms of expanding it's product. I can think of one thing Twitter can do right now that would cause Google+ some major grief and that's allowing more then 140 characters per post. I can fit more into a single text message (SMS) then I can in a Tweet.
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LikeTwitter is a huge problem for Google and Facebook because it fits mobile perfectly! No other social network is so simple, thus great in using by smartphones, so they'll try to kill it as much as they can...
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Likeagree with most of the comments - Twitter can't complain seeing as they pulled the rug on Google getting access to the firehouse of data. As far as social in search, yes, why not, I need control, I need to filter but sometimes I may want that.
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LikeI agree that I dont want my social links to be part of my search. Why can't they do something useful like integrate GMarks with Google search to provide you with realtime bookmarks searching.
But I also agree with other comments that twitter should do more to encourage a monopoly over their "breaking news" market by partnering with Google to bring their search results to Googles own.
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LikeI don't believe I have ever searched Google for Twitter links to relevant breaking news. I do search Twitter breaking news. Furthermore, if Twitter wants to be seen as a leader in breaking news, they should allow Google to index their tweets in real time.
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LikeSure, but then why wouldn't Twitter let Google index tweets freely? That's why Google had to create G+ and what social networks (Twitter and Facebook) have to do is: SEARCH.
So, when you want to search something in real-time: fo to Twitter. If you want to search about a giveaway contest or about your people or events, go to Facebook. If you want to search anything else, go to Google.
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LikeTwitter should've renewed their deal with Google for Google Real Time instead of complaining now.. http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/05/google-temporarily-suspends-realtime-search-thanks-to-expired-t/
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LikeWell said. Was thinking exactly the same. Harmen
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LikeI disagree with this so much. -__-
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