Search is great at what it does, but there are some major limitations. It’s main strength is also it’s main weakness…..the algorithm. Whilst Google’s algorithm is extremely complex and does a good job of making sense of the web, it’s not personal. Its recommendations are based on high level mathematics which most of us won’t be able to comprehend. But your taste is probably completely different from your neighbour’s, so when both of you search for ‘holiday in spain’ in Google, should you get the same results?

Social search tries to tackle this problem. The relevancy of social search results are determined by interactions and/or contributions by its users. By searching for things which like minded people have searched for, you should get results which are far more relevant to you than the results a regular search engine could come up with.

There are various ways of social search, such as tagging and bookmarking. Delicious is a social bookmarking site, where people can tag their bookmarks and make them public available. This means that not only do you get to see other people’s bookmarks, but you can also see the tags they have used. And this is where social search kicks in, you can search the tags others have used. Plus, it keeps track of how many people have bookmarked a site, which shows you the popularity of each bookmark – the more votes, the more popular that particular bookmark is!

Another example is Digg, a social news service. People submit articles to Digg and others can vote, the articles with most votes end up on the home page, getting a ton of traffic. But if you look further you’ll notice that people submit articles to certain categories and others can vote whether or not they like the article. Again, another way to make sense of the web.

Google has also noted the importance of social search and is doing more and more to integrate a more human based aspect into their algorithm.

Social search is important for various reasons. Social search is powered by humans, which means the relevancy increases. But the most important thing is that these social search sites have thousands, if not millions of users. These people could potentially see your website, so just think of the traffic you could get from these sites. Plus, plenty of these people have the power to link to your site too.

Key Takeaways

• Social search is another evolution of the search medium
• Social search is powered by humans
• Social search has the ability to drive traffic and gain links

So, how can we help you?

As these sites are powered by humans it’s important to understand the intricacies of the communities surrounding them. Humans interpret things differently from search engines and it’s important to keep this in mind. We have been part of these communities for years and understand how they work and what drives them. Through our experience we can help your company attract large numbers of traffic and backlinks through social search.

Get in touch now and one of our experts will help you determine the right strategy to dive into social search!