Many of us spend large parts of our day searching for information. After spending the weekend at Social Web FooCamp, I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about how I search for information using a combination of social and algorithmic methods. When I talk about “social search,” I am referring to using your network or other human beings to find information. In essence, you are relying on the knowledge of other people, instead of using Google or another search engine, which uses algorithmic methods to determine the best results.

Algorithmic searches, on the other hand, are great for finding information when you know enough about a topic to formulate a strong query that will return highly relevant results. These searches work best for me when my question has little ambiguity and when I know enough about a topic to formulate a good search query. Read more »