Google has just launched Google Friend Connect, a service that allows site owners to integrate social applications onto their pages just by cut & pasting some code.
The service is pretty big news for bloggers and anybody who has a fair amount of traffic and wants to make their site more social. Personally I have 2500 RSS readers and will be using the service to allow you to rate posts and give feedback. I might even create a fan wall where readers can sign up to be Blogstorm fans.
Giving Google access to ratings, comments and reviews of my posts could be pretty helpful in terms of SEO if Google starts to integrate this into the algorithm. If they know that 50 trusted Google users have recommended a post on my blog then it will rank better than another post that has received very poor ratings.
This is the biggest step yet towards social data being included in search. Check out the video below and view some example sites. I have included some screenshots so you can see just how important this could be.

Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. With just a few snippets of code, you get more people engaging more deeply with your site.
Attract more visitors. Visitors bring along friends from social networks like Facebook, orkut, and others to interact on your site.
Enrich your site with social features. Choose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets provided by Google and the OpenSocial developer community.
No programming whatsoever. Just copy and paste snippets of code into your site, and Google Friend Connect does the rest.
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