With the launch of Google Social Search last week, this puts a new dimension on social search optimisation and how companies should be approaching their search optimisation strategy.

Your social circle is based upon the information that Google stores in your Google account. It pulls together your contacts from Google, services in your Google profile, and your connections on sites such as Twitter.

The rationale behind this change is that if you are connected with these people they are engaged with you and your company, so you will have relevance and trust.

Companies should optimise the number of relevant contacts that they have on the various social networking sites such as Linkedin and Twitter.

So Google Trust Rank is going to become a growing influence in rankings. So companies now longer can hide behind the world of social media, then need to embrace it, otherwise they could potentially see their listings in Google natural search diminishing.

A word of caution though. When Google page rank came out, people went crazy doing reciprocal linking to grow their inbound links. Eventually Google caught up with this practice and sites were heavily penalised for this. So grow your network with quality and relevance in mind. Don’t just connect with someone, just because you can – are they relevant to your business and brand?

What’s your take on Google social search and how do you think it’ll impact search listings?