Google announced a couple of new features for Google Shopping today: the ability to read reviews from people you know, and the ability to share your reviews.
“Now you can now easily see if someone you’ve connected with on Google has reviewed a product that is in your Google Shopping search results,” says product manager Karen Corby. “When you click on a particular product and scroll down to the ‘Reviews’ section, reviews from your friends and contacts will appear at the top of the list.”
“We’ve also made it easy to write your own product reviews on Google Shopping. To write a review, login with your Google+ account, click on the product you’d like to review, then click the ‘write a review’ button at the top of the page,” says Corby. “Once you submit your review, it will be publicly available to anyone who views that product on Google Shopping. You can also choose to post your review to your Google+ stream.”
These connections will be displayed in search results when applicable.
These social features are things that you might have expected Google to have implemented at launch, but either way, they’re here now.