In a Wednesday announcement, Google said that its Social Search service, which was announced at the Web 2.0 conference, is graduating from an early prototype to a wider testing level, and is being promoted to Google. com.

Over the next few days, Social Search, which basically enhances search results with the inclusion of public content from the social networks of the users, will allow Google search engine’s English-language users to see relevant links to those items that their social-networking contacts have publicly posted on the Web.

However, the Social Search functionality necessitates that all the users in a particular social circle are signed into the program, so as to facilitate the addition of links to the content they produce via Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, and other such sites.

Furthermore, Google also revealed that the Social Search results’ features will also work for the Google Images engine for those friends of the user who have added their Flickr or Picasa accounts to their Google Profiles.

Noting that the “beta” tag now attached to the Social Search service is a clear indication that it will evolve tremendously in the near future, Maureen Heymans and Terran Melconian, Google’s technical heads for Social Search and Social Image Search respectively, wrote in a blog post: “We think there's tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we're just beginning to scratch the surface.”