Benefits
To date social search engines have not demonstrated measurably improved search results over algorithmic search engines. However, there are potential benefits deriving from the human input qualities of social search.
Reduced impact of link spam by relying less on link structure of web pages.
Increased relevance because each result has been selected by users.
Leverage a network of trusted individuals by providing an indication of whether they thought a particular result was good or bad.
The introduction of 'human judgement' suggests that each web page has been viewed and endorsed by one or more people, and they have concluded it is relevant and worthy of being shared with others using human techniques that go beyond the computer's current ability to analyze a web page.
Web pages are considered to be relevant from the reader's perspective, rather than the author who desires their content to be viewed, or the web master as they create links.
More current results. Because a social search engine is constantly getting feedback it is potentially able to display results that are more current or in context with changing information.