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Google Tests Custom Highlights, Comments In Search

Posted by timothy on from the humans-err-good dept.

Ian Lamont writes "Google is testing functionality that lets users tinker with query results by re-ranking them and commenting on them. The reason for the commenting feature: 'We're just curious to see how it will be used,' according to a Google engineer quoted in the article. The company has posted screenshots of some of the experiments, which also involve highlighting certain results as well as stems and synonyms within results. Google declined to answer any questions about the experiments, and it's not known whether Google would factor the rearranging of results by users into the overall computation for ranking results for those specific queries. It's also not clear whether search result comments would be made available to anyone to read."

6 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Sweet! by BitterOldGUy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now I can rank the advertisements lower and comment on sites that pretend to be informational and are nothing but advertising.

  2. How about this -- by mingot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let us completely block certain domains from our personal search results. ExpertSexchange would be first to go.

    1. Re:How about this -- by jacquesm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      what bugs me most is the sites that clone forum questions, load them up with ads and recycle them so that if you type in a question in to google one of these sites will come up with a perfect match but there is no answer or follow up to the question.

      --
      MP3 Search Engine
  3. so much for the algorithms then by jacquesm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems like google has found out that Yahoo maybe had a point after all when they questioned the ability of algorithms to rank results.

    Google has thus far always held that the only way to deal with this problem is automation, I find it really interesting to see them turn around like this and yield to the 'wisdom of the crowds'.

    In the end this will probably result in just one more element in their ranking formula, the human factor. I still very much welcome this trend.

    Humans are a lot harder to game than algorithms.

    --
    MP3 Search Engine
    1. Re:so much for the algorithms then by hachete · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh, do be serious. I give you one example: gold farmers. Yeah, pay someone to rank the results for you. See? System destroyed before it's begun.

      --
      Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
  4. Re:Not Sweet by uchian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It could be useful for setting up individual search profiles. For instance, I search for computer stuff all the time, so if I search for "wine" chances are I'm looking for the wine, the windows emulator, rather than the wikipedia article on the difference between red and white wines.

    Or another case for me, is I quite often search for hardware reviews before I buy, and prefer reviews of independant sites rather than reviews attached to shops. If I kept promoting independant reviews to the top of my search until google cottoned on and made all my searches looking for reviews work like that... that would be a very positive way of customising individual searches.

    Of course, you can look at this as another way to target advertising through google to use more as well.

    But in general, I would be in favour of this.