As if the readers of The Legal Watercooler needed another reason to participate in social media and social networking:

Google Social Search should be available to everyone by the end of today.

Your friends and contacts are a key part of your life online. Most people on the web today make social connections and publish web content in many different ways, including blogs, status updates and tweets. This translates to a public social web of content that has special relevance to each person. Unfortunately, that information isn’t always very easy to find in one simple place. That’s why today we’re rolling out a new experiment on Google Labs called Google Social Search that helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle. It should be available for everyone to try by the end of the day, so be sure to check back.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqWJxgp-_mU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the short video, when someone in your network searches a topic, say Legal Marketing, what you post in your social networks will show up at the bottom of the search results.

If you’re an attorney, this can and SHOULD include key legal terms, concepts, court rulings, etc.

So if you haven’t done so yet:

1. Set up a Google Gmail account. This is your passport to all things Google.
2. Under Settings (top right tab), create a Google Profile (here’s mine).
3. Under “Add Links” include your public accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog, Facebook company page, Google Reader, etc).