Google has moved quickly with an experiment to counter Microsoft’s move to return results based on Facebook social graphs.  Some recent Google results have been returned with a real-time ‘shared by’ link to show how many times the topic has been mentioned on social networks.  It’s also added a ‘recent updates’ link to its real-time search page for mentions in the wider discussion on Twitter, Facebook etc.

Malcolm Coles explained on his blog that he spotted the new search element on the main news results page.  Check it out to see the screenshots.  Patricio Robles on the Econsultancy blog suggested that Google could be working on a plan to integrate sharing as a ranking signal into search – a ‘subtle, non-intrusive link’ to social search results based on the social conversation.

Google and Bing both want an element layer of social search but are clearly heading down different routes: “Bing is showing content only from your known friends on Facebook … [but] Google is showing comments and links being shared by everyone on social networks,” (Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan).

One thing is for certain – the vision for social search is fast becoming a reality.