Ever tried to hunt down a cool and affordable hotel in London but can’t seem to find one after scrolling through pages of Google?

Well, Google has launched a new product that has the potential to make it easier to track down the type of hotel you are looking for by linking into your social network.

Launched in October 2009, Google Social Search has only recently been made available to the public at large.

The new search will now include sites that your friends have either posted content on or bookmarked – including a positive post made on Trip Advisor.

You need a Google account and a Google profile to get the search going. And while Google says you then link into your friends on your contact list and through various network sites such as Twitter and Flikr etc – it seems your friends must also have Google profiles for your searches to work.

The implications for companies are potentially significant.  With this new Social search creeping in as people join the network, companies could find their once high rankings on the old school “SEO” way reduced. Komosion advises companies to check their rankings each week and take note if they are going down.

How popular Social search will be is a guessing game.  But one thing that jumps out immediately is that Google admits that after you create your Google Profile, it’ll take “a few weeks” before you start seeing ‘socialised’ search results.

This makes is hard to immediately gauge the effectiveness of the tool, and in a climate where there’s frequent discussion of social network switch-off, Komosion is wondering whether people will create the bare bones of a profile, not see any benefits, and forget about it as they click through to something more immediately engaging.