Google does social searching

Google just rolled out Social Search, a new experiment in providing better or more relevant results. You join the experiment through google.com/experimental  In addition to the usual results, if you click the "show options" link at the top of the search results page, you'll see an option for Social. This separates out just the results from your circle of friends (that Google knows about).

Google identifies your friends through a few means:

• Your Google Contacts (did you know about this? - another place to house info on all your contacts
• Google Reader
• links in your Google profile to other social services (Twitter, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)
• your gmail chat contacts

Damn you, Google! Yet another reason to share all my personal links with you...