Google Fellow Amit Singhal describes the function of search engines like his in just about the best way possible. “Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more,” he says.

Imagine the impact of such a tool. Okay fine — no need to imagine. Just log and start exploring distant corners of the information universe. It really is a miracle. Or at least it should feel like the most ridiculously amazing, enriching and empowering human achievement in the long, ridiculous history of human achievement. Find the information/art/music/entertainment/community/birthday gift/driving directions/restaurant recommendation/cloud-stored memory you need within milliseconds of banging your fingers against a few keys.

Show up in 17th century New England with an iPhone, and you’d likely be crowned king (if not first burned at the stake with the other witches).

But Singhal also highlights what’s lacking in this otherwise-marvelous tool — and demonstrates what his pioneering company is doing about it.

“Clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.

As a child, my favorite fruit was Chikoo, which is exceptionally sweet and tasty. A few years back when getting a family dog, we decided to name our sweet little puppy after my favorite fruit. Over the years we have privately shared many pictures of Chikoo (our dog) with our family. To me, the query [chikoo] means two very sweet and different things, and today’s improvements give me the magical experience of finding both the Chikoos I love, right in the results page.”

Check out what Google is calling “Search, Plus Your World”. More social. More personal. More elements like personal profiles, shared websites, and results directly related to folks you know.

See the advantage?

Many of these features have been featured in Google results for some time now, especially pages recommended by contacts you might have if you use Gmail or Google-Plus. But what’s new is the intentionality of it — you can actually search specifically for results related to folks you know, as well as decide what you want to show up. Google-Plus profiles will also show up in auto-recommend while searchers are typing in their queries.

The move makes sense. In many ways, the core aim of this is the same thing that has many techies speculating that Facebook might one day conquer the search giant at its own game — access to information that’s tailored to the unique worlds that each searcher lives in. Facebook tends to have lots of information about its users. Google is getting there as well. That’s the future of search.

We’ll get into more of why this matters to Dallas businesses in the future, but you can imagine its implications on social media marketing, search engine optimization, and mobile web and search. In the meantime, our Dallas social media marketing and Dallas SEO specialists are happy to help you devise an Internet marketing strategy unique to your company’s needs.