Slashdot Mirror
Google Offers Personalized Search
Ryan Barrett writes " Google is just overflowing with
news today. Along with the recently announced UI redesign, they've
launched a personalized search
engine on Google Labs. It's still beta, but it looks pretty cool. (Note
that it probably uses technology acquired when they bought Kaltix
last year.) Other announcements include Web Alerts, a 'numrange' command, and
image search built into Google News."
I wish Google would fix their searching of mailing lists. I would love to see duplicates filtered, messages ordered by date, and indexing by subject.
Wow, and the day isn't even over yet. When's Slashdot ever going to get a Google icon?
Obviously you haven't even seen the google personalized search thingie. It's as clean as the traditional google search, with a link that allows you to set your search options.
- These characters were randomly selected.
One of the coolest things about Google, IMO is the amount of customization they can offer storing content locally using cookies without needing any kind of registration. Nothing more annoying than having to fill out a huge form on every other website you visit, especially given that most of them ask for WAY more information than is really needed.
Google groups, where they do need registration has a form that asks for:
E-mail
Password
Password confirmation
Google rocks!
Okay, so the categories are:
Arts/Cinema
Business/Industries
Computers
Health
Home
Kids/Teens
Music
News
Recreation
Science
Society
Sports
Regions
There should be a subcategory of "Porn" under each and every one of those.
The coolest voice ever.
"Place hard core lesbian porn at top of search" really should be an option.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
Hmm. Uncool, for me at least. I get more than enough personalized coverage from other sources - I already know where to go. What I rely on Google News for is a good snapshot of stuff that I haven't already heard about before. Now, if they would integrate it so that one of the boxes on the standard news site was "Personal" and one was "Local" (to balance out, L-R), that would be cool... but I think that the focus on just showing the viewer what they want to see is out of place for a news portal. Just my two cents, of course.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Google seems to registered has registered 466453.com for Google Number Service on cell phones. The idea is that users just send the numbers on a phone keypad for their serarch query, with Google doing the magic of figuring out what you meant. The number 466453 was selected because it's the number you get if you type out "Google" that way.
So, I ran two side-by-side tabs, one which contains the "normal" Google search and the other contains the "personalized" search, with the slider set at "max". It seems to do a fairly good job. I set a couple of preferences, and now it seems to rank stuff which mentions Linux higher.
Or move the slider around and watch the search results rearrange themselves on the page!
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Really, this could turn into Google's answer to avoid "link spam" to unrelated sites. By asking the user in advance what categories their query is going to be about, it's a way of being able to declare all offtopic sites offtopic and therefore disqualified from the results.
The ideal web search shouldn't produce 30 million hits... it should do the work of determining the one hit you really wanted to see, with a small handful of few runner ups to confirm the info on the first site.
From what I've heard the beta versions run on smaller single servers and don't harness the full power of Google's server farms. Note the disclaimer on labs.google.com that says: Please note: These technologies are still in the beginning stages of development, so they may disappear without warning or perform erratically. If something's not working on this page, please come back and try it again later.
Interestingly it is working perfectly well with Konqueror. I wonder what Konqueror has, that safari is lacking, that has forced them not to support Safari right now. Google Personalized seems to be using heavy use of JavaScript, and as far as I know, Konqueror and Safari both use KJS for as a JavaScript interpreter. So...
On a side note, I think I actualy like the idea of this personalized search. Someone up here mentioned that s/he prefers the traditional search engine, cause it is uncluttered. Well, I can't see how google's personalized pages are any more cluttered than the traditional search page. They look completely the same, just in the personalized page a scroll bar is added to the search result page.
I think this actually opens a new horizon in google. You can have the traditional original search, by just moving the scroll bar to the left, or you can get a specific seacrh on a specific topic that interests you.
They might seem totaly unrelated, but given the current technologies that are comming out of Google Labs, am I the only one who is being reminded of the golden ages of Bell Labs? If the Google guys really continue to push their innovation engine with this speed, I don't see how even a monopoly should be able to crush them.
I know, I sound like a fanboy, but who isn't a fan of google? really...
--
Am I the only one that seems to have seen a rather disturbing trend of late with Google searches? Seems like every time I do a search nowadays, I end up with the first few pages (sometimes every page) of websites that are only interested in selling me the Item I was trying to find more information about, to me this is annoying as hell, as all I wanted was some specs on the product, I don't need to be shown 50 different websites that sell the damn thing and have the same Stupid General Info sheet.
Maybe its the way I am doing my searches, but I seem to recall last year about this time doing some similar Research on New items and Was getting Manufacturers, Forums about, Tech info Sites about, Reviews, etc. Not anymore though, now I get Buy it here, or we have lower prices, or Best price on the Net, etc. I have just about given up using Google for any kind of serious research searching. I shall give this Personalized Search engine a Try, and maybe I could stop getting tons of sites trying to Sell me some product that I am only interested in trying to figure out if it will work for me.
Signed, One Pissed Off Searcher.
If firefighters fight fire and crime fighters fight crime, what do Freedom fighters fight?
Where do you see this? I'm on Safari and the Personalized Search seems to load up fine for me, and searches seem to work. I didn't see Safari mentioned in the FAQ. What am I missing?
Random is the New Order.