With the launch of its experimental 'Social Search' service, Google has made it easier for the searchers to trace the online content authored by their friends and other personal contacts.

The newly-released Social Search service, introduced as a new Google Labs' feature, will add opinions from a user's friends and associates - listed in Gmail, Google Talk, Google Reader; and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed - to the search engine results pertaining to products and services.

Promising the introduction of Google Social Search at San Francisco's Web 2.0 Summit last week, Google's VP of search products, Marissa Mayer, had told Computerworld that the service will essentially add 'a long-missing piece to the search puzzle.'

Mayer said: "There's a huge amount of data on social networks. We came up with a way to have social networks influence your search results. If you're signed into Social Search, you get content from your friends."

Users can have a go at the Google Social Search experiment by visiting Google Labs and then clicking the designated 'Social Search' button.

The new Social Search feature, which comes within days of Google's announcement of a real-time search agreement with Twitter, also likely paves the way for the eventual inclusion of Twitter posts - 'tweets' - in Google search results.