Google Announce Social Search

How the search engine worlds changes. First it was universal search, then it was semantic search, now it's social search! At Web 2.0 Expo yesterday VP of search, Marissa Mayer, gave the surprise announcement.

So far all I know about it is:

• The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results
• These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.
• They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.

 I'll track what is happening and report back soon. Rumour has it that it will launch in Google labs real soon.