October is the month of personalization in search, as both Google and Bing make announcements to enable further integration with social media sites.
At one end, we see Bing and Facebook deepening their relationship, while Google adds more functionality for Twitter users.
Bing and Facebook
Facebook had opened its doors to Bing, making it the default search engine for the social network. Now Bing is doing the same thing. In an expansion of their partnership, Facebook data will now be displayed in Bing result pages.
This information includes pages that were "liked" by your Facebook friends, and personal profile results of people on Facebook.
Google News and Twitter
Are you interested in news articles that your Twitter network has shared? Well now you can see which news stories were shared by people you are following, with Google News' "Friends" section. All you need to do is enter your Twitter username into the Friends side column. No logging in or oAuth is required.
The Friends section is still in its early stages right now, and is limited to the News section in Google. Furthermore,
If someone you follow has shared an article or a link that cannot be found in Google News, then you will not see that update in the Friends section.
Click the screenshot below to enlarge.
(Source: Barry Schwartz)
What This Means
- Having a presence on Facebook and Twitter is more important than ever.
- You should build out that presence and be connected to other users.
- Both of the leading search engines recognize that social search will play a larger role in the future.