Google launches social search tool

Google Labs has launched Social Search, an experimental feature that lets web users find publicly available web content put up by their online social circle.

The search giant said the aim of the Social Search tool was to make internet searches more relevant and will aggregate web content such as blogs, reviews and other publicly available online content.

Google said a person’s social circle will be a combination of Gmail chat buddies, Gmail contacts, friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you're publicly connected to on other social sites such as Twitter.

When using Social Search Google said people who have signed up to use the feature will sometimes see a set of 'Results from people in your social circle' towards the bottom of the results page.

Tom Stocky, Google’s director of product management, said: "This is about making your search results even more relevant. For some searches, what your friends have published online might be exactly what you want.

"For example, say you're looking for movie reviews and one of your friends happened to write about that movie on his blog - you would probably want to read it, and that's what Social Search makes it easier to find."

Anyone with a Google Mail account can try Social Search. If they don't want to see social search results, they simply sign out of their Google Mail account.

Users can opt out of the Social Search experiment at any time by clicking the Leave button.