Google Social Search – still good not evil

Frederic Lardinois at Memeburn – tech-savvy insight and analysis – was one of them who damned the service after what seemed to be a quick evaluation. He wrote: “Google’s ‘Search Plus Your World’ doesn’t improve your search”. And continued:“…the simple question of whether this update actually improves the search experience on Google. Google … said that it is “transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.” After testing the update, though, it feels like Google doesn’t quite understand the “people and relationships” part well enough yet to make it such an important factor in its flagship product.”
“I decided that instead of just doing artificial searches for the sake of it, I would just go back to my search history and retry a day’s worth of searches from last week and compare the personalised and regular results side by side.”Frederic’s quick conclusion was: “Too Much Clutter, Too Many Irrelevant Results.”Matt Rosoff, at Business Insider, is even more crass, and does not mince the words: “Google May Have Made The Worst Mistake In Its History…”, where he also refers to Gizmodos angle: “Google Just Made Bing The Best Search Engine.“

Even Twitter’s general counsel Alex Macgillivray (an ex-employee of the search giant) did send a personal tweet with the commentary: “Bad day for the Internet. Having been there, I can imagine the dissension @google to search being warped this way.”, which Chris Crum picked up in his article “Google Vs. Twitter: Is “Search Plus Your World” Bad For The Internet?” for WebProNews. An article that ReadWriteWeb followed up with their “Will You Drop Google Because of Search Plus Your World?”.

It goes on and on. But of course, I’ve been journalist by myself and know the rules pretty well: You’ve got to get a piece of sensation out there as fast as possible.

And – yes – there’s a lot to wonder and question. For an example why Twitter didn’t renew their agreement with google last summer, if that’s the reason for why Google doesn’t present the Twitter data in their new social search results? And if that means really bad user experience? Well, Eric Schmidt says the door is open for Twitter:

You might also argue whether social search should be opt in or opt out. Etc etc.

But in the bitter end – hey – look what Google really did for us?! They’ve been working with their social platform and the social search, since many years. And everything seems to take of now with Google+. This is nothing but at great opportunity for most of as both as individuals and businesses.

I think Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand has written a great factual article about the “Google Search Plus Your World”. Otherwise both Googles official blog and Inside Search, do explain what’s going on.

And look who’s talking; here comes the optimists, among others:
David for SiteBuilder: “How to use “Google search plus your world” for great business PR”
Ian Paul for PCWorld: “5 Ways To Use Google’s Search Plus Your World”
Tom for RightMixMarketing: “Why Are Marketers and Businesses Ignoring Google Plus?”
Erin Everhart for Mashable: “How Google’s Social Search Shift Will Impact Your Brand’s SEO”

So for you guys that would like to find out what Google Search Plus Your World is all about and in particular could do for you. Take your time, check out the opportunities – and ignore the threats.