Google Turns On User-Tweakable Search Wiki 161
Barence writes "Google has launched a new service that allows users to tailor to their own search results. Called SearchWiki, the service allows Google account holders to move results up or off the rankings, or even add their own choice of site to the top of the search results. Google claims that any changes a user makes will only affect their results, and not those of fellow surfers, although it's difficult to believe that some of the feedback generated from the SearchWiki won't be used to fine tune the Google search algorithm. Is this a cunning way to encourage people to sign in while they search, thus providing Google with a richer set of data that can be mapped to specific user accounts?"
Bye bye Expert sexchange (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do they rank so high anyway?
What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Will people really use this at the slight chance that Google might one day use the information to improve their engine, even so they say that they won't?
User-tweakable SearchWiki... one might as well just use Wikipedia. I guess for 95% of all common searchterms, there is an informative Wiki-article anyway and those already have related peer-reviewed links at the bottom, excluding scam and parking sites. There is a good reason that most queries on Google provide Wikipedia as the first result.
Edit: sounds a bit more "flamebatish" than I wanted it to be but whatever.
Edit2: Yes, I can edit my comments, don't you?
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get the point of this service. When I use Google, I don't hang around to admire my search results, I'm just glad I managed to craft a query that landed what I wanted on the first page. I am certainly not going to sit around to review my search results on their behalf.
Re:Bye bye Expert sexchange (Score:4, Insightful)
This was exactly my first thought -- Expert-sexchange is pretty annoying! I don't think it would invade my privacy if I have a way to tell google what I don't like to see ... after all am I using Google because they deliver more or less relevant results.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes it is (Score:1, Insightful)
...and in case the original poster didn't know: Google already tracks you through your IP address, cookies and browser details. And they already track which search results you click on. The only new thing this features provides is the ability to finetune the search results, there are no privacy implications that weren't there already.
Re:Insane amounts of data (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is still antisocial enough that I would much rather kill experts-exchange from every search.
You are exactly right about wanting to kill certain search polluters.
Weirdly, I often search for fragments of lyrics trying to find the entire song and who sang it. Recently the top several lyrics sites don't provide the lyrics in text, but in some sort of crapstastic flash thingy. And way too many ads.
What use is having a googlebot AND an army of street view vehicles if you can't sic the googlebot to killing the bastards polluting the index?
Such a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Is this a cunning way to encourage people to sign in while they search, thus providing Google with a richer set of data that can be mapped to specific user accounts?"
Of course it is. But as a Google fangirl with no sense of privacy, I have to say, is this really a bad thing? Greater knowledge about their users will lead to more accurately targeted adverts. Is it such a bad thing that Google are increasing their potential earnings?
Google get more money, advertisers get more potential customers, and publishers get more money from adverts, and the customers get pointed to more sites they're likely to be interested in. Who loses?
Re:Finally, a Way to Formalize French-Bashing (Score:1, Insightful)
CustomizeGoogle Firefox addon (Score:2, Insightful)
The CustomizeGoogle Firefox addon allows you to filter search results like experts-exchange.com with wildcard expressions. Besides that, the addon can rewrite some of Google's pages to achieve, for example:
- Rewrite image search results to point directly to the images
- Remove ads
- Permanently set search preferences without having to log into your Google account. The addon stores the settings on the client's side and rewrites all HTTP GET requests to Google with the proper parameters.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743 [mozilla.org]
Re:CustomizeGoogle Firefox addon (Score:2, Insightful)
This part is covered already -- they get set in your cookie. No need to even have a Google account to permanently turn on 100 results per page, and turn off SafeSearch.
Keeping the cookie allows Google to track your searches. You can avoid that with CustomizeGoogle.