Google first introduced social search in 2009, and has been thoroughly testing ever since. Today, the search giant finally decided to go all-out, as they look to embed the people’s opinion into our searches — be it from people we’re connected to in Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, Quora, their own blogs and websites etc.  All this, on top of providing us the most relevant pages when we search.

From now on, social search will not only appear at the bottom of the page, but will be mixed in with all of the page’s results, based on relevance. Eventually, you’ll encounter more results that have your friends looped in somehow, whether the result is a piece of information they’ve posted themselves or something that they shared on their favorite social media website. An annotation will appear below the link revealing the identity of the contact, and where he shared it. You’ll see a note saying, “FRIEND’S NAME shared this” with a profile icon along with it.

In addition to these features, Google also made it easy for users to connect accounts.  Aside from being able to publicly connect accounts via Google profile, a new option was also added to connect accounts privately to a Google account. Also, with the help of its infamous algorithms, the new Google social search will determine accounts that might belong to the same user for having the same username, as well as allow that user to connect the accounts.

However, if you have over 20,000 people in your social circle, it would be impossible for Google to link all of their results to your search. There’s a limit as to how many results they can link, but they expect to lift the limit over time.

Google social search is one answer to the growing number of spam results flooding the internet, causing Google some algorithmic angst of its own. By getting results from the people you trust, chances are you’re getting more reliable results. This is significant because “There’s a lot more sharing than creating going on on the web,” said Mike Cassidy, Google’s Product Management Director.The updates will start to roll out tomorrow in English only. It’s important to take note that you’ll need to be logged in to your Google account to enjoy the new social search.  Yep. Another reason to fear Big Brother.

Google’s move seem to be a drastic move against Greplin, a social search firm, as they announced the general availability of their service this week as well.  Not to mention, Microsoft Bing has taken a social aim, largely due to its Facebook team-up, though Facebook itself has become a social search powerhouse all its own. Google is fully aware of the importance of social search, and is quick to defend its business methods around big data, taking the matter up with Facebook, which has its own ideas around it. Whoever gets its way around it will surely attempt to trump Google, just like its Alta Vista overthrow all those years ago. However, beating Google won’t be easy.  It’s been making acquisitions around social search, and it was reported to be eying fflick for this purpose.

Social search is prevalent today, and it’s not just Google and Greplin whose seeing this. Niche markets are taking advantage of social search’s data markets as well.   Foodily, a social search engine built around food, is also making its way to the industry. It aggregates millions of recipes across the internet, as well as offers a bunch of tools for people to share content.