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Google rolled out a new tool that allows users to personalize their search results. The SearchWiki tools are designed to let anyone logged into Google accounts re-arrange, re-rank, and edit the results. This means users can actually move the results to a higher position, delete results that aren’t useful, and add notes to them as well.
Marissa Mayer, the vice president of search products and user experience for Google, says the tools are especially valuable for users when they conduct repeated searches. For instance, someone who often searches for reference materials could easily eliminate the results that are not helpful instead of having to sort through them each time.
The edited version of the results is only viewable to the user that made them. However, users can select a view that shows an overall version of changes that other SearchWiki users have made.
Up to this point, Google has been very adamant about not including human input into its search results saying their mathematical algorithms are more efficient on their own. There has been no announcement that Google is incorporating SearchWiki into its algorithm, but Mayer did say “some of these signals might be used to influence algorithms in the future.”
Shar VanBoshirk, an analyst for Forrester Research, praises this move by Google.
“The reality is the more expert searchers become, the greater their expectations.”
On the contrary, Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch is not giving SearchWiki the same praise that Forrester Research did.
“…Google search wasn’t broken. It’s one of the few things on the Internet that isn’t. I love it, as does 62% of everyone on the Internet. This new stuff is a mess of arrows and troll comments and stuff moving around the page. That doesn’t make my search experience more useful. It makes it move to another search engine.”
Yahoo also has a personalization service called MyWeb that allows users to save useful searches and search based upon what is popular with people they know.
What makes this story even more interesting is that Bruce Clay made a public announcement last week claiming: “[search] ranking is dead.” While Matt Cutts of Google didn’t come out and agree with Bruce, he did say that ranking wasn’t as important as it once was. That discussion alone sparked a lot of discussion among SEO’s, but wonder what their reaction is to SearchWiki?
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