Thanks for the feedback. After having announced social integration in search, Google seems to have gone a little cagey on it. I'm not sure if it's because of the mixed reaction to it.
When they first launched it, the tabs to use or not use social search results were right there on the top right section of the search page. They've since been moving it around and it shows only if you click "More search tools" on the bottom left, where one option is "All search results" and another is "Social". And it isn't immediately obvious how much weightage the first gives to social results, if any at all.
Anyway, "All search results" is what I used and it does not appear to display what I get if I pick just the "Social" option, so it should be a decent indication of what the average Google search will show. Haven't used DuckDuckGo yet, will mosey over.