Results from my Social Circle for "Marketing"

I noticed yesterday that new results were on my Google results page (entry on the page, above?).  A bit stalker-ish, I guess, but its the beginnings of mainstreaming the relevant web the way we’ve been talking about on this blog and many others.

Google’s take on Social Search mirrors what I’ve been saying (or my thoughts mirror theirs, I guess… probably should go ahead and assume they thought of this whole relevance thing first… ) for a while: Results from people we’ve chosen to connect to are more relevant to us. Now that Google is showing me results from people I’m connected to online (Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, etc.) the size and quality of that network matters more than ever.

The search page above is one for “Marketing.” Since I am connected online to a number of talented, prolific, smart and creative marketing people, the results returned for me were a list of awesomeness I could peruse. Blog posts I missed, white papers, web sites, all sorts of goodness. From people I’ve already chosen to listen to. In one place, regardless of how I’m connected to that person and where the content resided originally.

Some of the "Marketing" results from my social circle via Google

If I were only connected to a few great marketers, I’d miss out on some of the great resources I found. Social search filters the web through my definition of relevant and shows me more of who I trust. I am very, very happy.

Where do you see this going? How will it change how businesses view connecting with people? How they treat their web sites? Social results are on the bottom of the coveted first page… maybe the best new way to get first page placement is to be (drum roll…) RELEVANT to your prospect rather than merely the best SEO-’d web site out there. Here’s hoping.

Thanks for checking out the new site. I have work to do still on the Portfolio and Partners pages, but I’m really excited about the new look and feel, and the ability to interact with everyone. Please take a look around… if you have any thoughts you want to share, please leave me a comment