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    'Focus on the User' swaps Google+ for the entire social web when searching

    'Focus on the User' swaps Google+ for the entire social web when searching

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    Focus on the User is a new bookmarklet developed by engineers at Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter than allows users to swap in results from all across the social web in exchange for the Google+ focused results that appear when doing a Google search.

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    Focus on the User
    Focus on the User

    A few weeks ago, Google's "Search, plus your world" initiative started prioritizing Google+ results when searching over other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. This led to some unhappy griping from Twitter as well as increased scrutiny from the FTC, but some engineers over at Facebook have taken matters into their own hands. Using a bookmarklet they're calling "Focus on the User," the Google+ focused search results are instead replaced with results from across a variety of social platforms, concentrating on the result's relevancy rather than what network it came from. For example, a search for "cooking" brings up Jamie Oliver's Google+ page, which hasn't been updated in almost two months. Using the bookmarklet, this is replaced with a link to Jamie Oliver's Twitter feed, which is constantly updated and has 10 times as many followers as his Google+ profile.

    All you need to do to try this tool is drag a bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar in Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, do a search on Google, and click the bookmarklet to get your updates search results. In addition to updating results in organic search, the "people and pages on Google+" box on the right is converted to "people and pages from the Social Web" — it also even updates the results you see in autocomplete when typing, though the tool feels less useful in this instance. If you're a user disappointed with Google's new focus on Google+ results, this bookmarklet should help open search back up for you.