If you are an English-speaking signed-in user of google.com, you’re likely to see a few changes additions to your search results over the next few days: Google’s becoming more social.

Late last year Google released the Social Search experiment to make search more personal with relevant web content from your friends and online contacts. From Wednesday, Social Search went into beta and is moving out of labs phase.

Maureen Heymans, Technical Lead for Social Search, and Terran Melconian, Technical Lead for Social Image Search describe Social Search as such on the official Google blog:

“We’ve been having a lot of fun with Social Search. It’s baby season here on our team — two of us just had little ones, and a third is on the way. We’re all getting ready to be parents for the first time and we have lots of questions. So, what do we do? We search Google, of course! With Social Search, when we search for [baby sleep patterns], [swaddling] or [best cribs], not only do we get the usual websites with expert opinions, we also find relevant pages from our friends and contacts. For example, if one of my friends has written a blog where he talks about a great baby shop he found in Mountain View, this might appear in my social results. I could probably find other reviews, but my friend’s blog is more relevant because I know and trust the author.”

There have also been a couple of new features added to Social Search. For example, social results have been added to Google Images. Now when you’re doing a search on Images, you may start seeing pictures from people in your social circle. These are pictures that your friends and other contacts have published publicly to the web on photo-sharing sites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr. Just like the other social results, social image results appear under a special heading called “Results from your social circle.” Here’s what it looks like:

Looking at the screenshot, you may notice two new links for “My social circle” and “My social content.” These links will take you to a new interface which has been added where you can see the connections and content behind your social results. Clicking on “My social circle” shows your extended network of online contacts and how you’re connected.

Clicking on “My social content” lists your public pages that might appear in other people’s social results. This new interface should give you a peek under the hood of how Social Search builds your social circle and connects you with web content from your friends and extended network. You can check out your social circle directly by visiting this link. (Note that it may take some time for the connections and content to update.)

If you want to get the most out of Social Search right away, get started by creating a Google profile, where you can add links to your other public online social services. Check out this short video to learn more:

[if you cannot view the embedded clip above, click here to go directly to the video on YouTube]

Some issues that require answers:

• What are the privacy implications of Social Search?
• What are the implications for SEO and SEM agencies (some are already talking about Social Search Optimisation)?
• How integrated is Facebook in Social Search? During the initial trial, the answer was not at all. Rumours are however surfacing that if your social circle includes Facebook in their profiles, limited results should show up.  For now though, Social Search will miss out on leveraging the full content and connections of Facebook’s 350 million members worldwide. Until this happens, Social Search will not have as big an impact on your average ‘Joe (who never) Blogs’.

Have you tried Social Search yet?

What are your thoughts? As usual, please share your opinions below.

(Just keep the comments social!)