Google announced new Search+ features

Google and Twitter are throwing virtual punches at each other over the launch of Google’s more personalized search results with “Search plus Your World.” Google announced the new socially enhanced search features on January 10, “transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.” “Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn't enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to... all from one search box,” said Google Fellow Amit Singhal in a post on the Official Google Blog. With Search plus Your World, Google bubbles up posts that have been privately shared with you on G+ (that only you can see), surfaces relevant posts and photos from your social connections, and personalizes web results based on your past behavior. Twitter is vocally objecting to Google’s new Search+ results feature because it “unfairly” highlights social content created on the company’s social network Google+ (G+) without including relevant search results from Twitter. “As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results,” said Twitter in an official statement. “We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.” Influential blogger MG Siegler said Google’s new Search+ features would kick off antitrust inquiries because Google appears to be “using Search to propel their social network” but Google has fired back at such accusations, reminding people that both Twitter and Facebook “don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things.” “We are a bit surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions,” commented Google via a post on its official Google+ page. Google’s Search plus Your World will start rolling out from today for users who are signed into their Google accounts and are searching in English. You can toggle between Search plus Your World results and no personal results on each search by clicking on the icon of the world (no personal results) or the person (Search plus Your World) found in the upper right hand side of the Google results page. Search+ personalization can also be turned off from within your Search Settings.