Social Search

A couple of weeks ago we commented that Google was looking a little Web 1.0 with its lack of tools to allow user-manipulation such as tags. Now, a story comes from USA Today to suggest that the search engines like Google and Yahoo are taking steps to get themselves all Web 2.0, like.

Yahoo, a distant second to Google, has entered the game largely by buying some of these start-ups, namely Del.icio.us, a system for discovering new sites based on shared bookmarks, and Flickr, a photo-sharing sites where users tag items with keywords to help friends and strangers alike discover photographs on any topic.

Google has started to incorporate community answers on travel and health questions into its main search engine. It has also established a program allowing users to contribute their own content, tagged with specific attributes, to turn up in search results… Google recently launched Google Co-op, an information-sharing feature that marks its first major foray into social search.

USATODAY.com - ‘Social’ search engines replace computer results with human recommendations