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Google Turns On User-Tweakable Search Wiki
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?"
If they didn't limit this to the single user, then Google bombing would be even more effective. I suppose they can still use negative votes for spam research.
> 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?"
Sounds like one of those people who surf with cookies disabled.
This seems to just be a way to refine search results and collect more specified data. This is great for Google's aims of collecting all the data in the universe, but an annoying "feature" for me.
I really dislike the "refined" searches, especially as Google's memory lasts for a long time. If I am doing a project on something, or am really interested in a topic (lets say travelling to Timbuktu), I will search it to death. However, a week later, when I am trying to search for something else (say used cars), I have to slog through a bunch of pages about car sales in Timbuktu!
Sigh.
Unity in Diversity
Three things come to mind...
1)Finally, a way to nuke useless results off my search results.
2)How long before Google uses the info for search rankings?
3)How long before asshats start fucking with us?
Why do they rank so high anyway?
Why would users put results to the top if there is no way of sharing those? It's not like users search for the same stuff every time in order to visit the same site that always happens to be on page 2 or something. ou could just bookmark that page.
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?
They adopted (or will be adopting) a core principle of Wikia Search, and that is user generated content (and ranking search results is some kind of content). On Wikia, everyone can change search results, insert new links and delete them.
However, user generated content needs a community (in this case mainly to prevent or revert spamming) - and google had many unsuccessful community projects in the past... I wonder if they are foolish enough to try it again.
When it comes to community projects many people object to the idea of working for free towards another one's gain. That's why nonprofits like the Free Software Foundation (GNU project) and the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia) are so successful at building high quality producing communities. I don't think that google has a chance here.
Is there anyway to turn it on?
which presumably will delete all your data.
Ahhhhhhahahahhahahaaaaa!
I found a post on this blog that notes a greasemonkey script to hide the searchwikified results, as well as a link to a google groups thread that shows a url tweak that will skip the feature in your searches (and can be used to make your iGoogle homepage searchwiki free).
...but who tagged this "itsatarp"?
The internets have been full of this topic in the past few days, but I don't see anything different on Google. I've been logged in all this time, *and* I opted for the experimental "Searchwiki with Sounds" stuff.
Doesn't seem to be on the official services list either, and http://google.com/searchwiki doesn't work at all. Where is it?
"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?"
Yep. You got a problem with that?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Sounds a little like Collaborative Filtering, where other users' ranking of items helps decide what items are suggested to you. Except for the "collaborative" part, of course. Unless I'm stuck in a Memento-like cycle of short-term amnesia, why on earth would I need Google to remind me that I'd rather they showed me item X before item Y? I've already run that particular search, and seen those items... If my rankings got to help someone else at some point, that might be worth the effort.
So, really, this new "Autistic Filtering" framework takes a bold step away from the Social Net fad, instead preferring the Anti-Social Net paradigm. As John Dickinson and countless others did not say, "Divided we stand, united we fall".
We ain't playin' wit'cha...
We gon' cover up the left, we gon' cover up the right.
We gon' cover up the left, we gon' cover up the right.
It's a tarp, it's a tarp, floor cover - floor cover.
It's a tarp, it's a tarp, floor cover - floor cover.
In parody of this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kJMH916DS4
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Personal hate - "experts exchange" - it fails me to understand why these are included in the search results - they are fucking ads.
Bookmarks are getting smarter. Firefox 3 adds support for tagging bookmarks, but not much in the way of uses for those tags. I think the tags get transferred to delicious if you use the delicious plug-in (I don't, so I'm not sure). If that is the case, there are many third party sites that will suck in data from delicious and spit out mind maps.
And really, I would be surprised if further tag features are not added to Firefox.
Or extensions. TagSifter looks neat:
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/adw/tagsifter/
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You really think that they're going to delete all your data? When they "delete" your account, they almost certainly are flipping a bit that says, "Account Deleted". Your information is too valuable to them, and no where in their Privacy Policy does it say they will delete your data.
http://www.asti-usa.com
It depends on how it's implemented.
:).
Groups could be done this way:
You are allowed to choose arbitrary groups to view results. So if you join the "I love pink ponies" group you will get rather different search rankings from "I'm a Hell's Angel biker".
Google will generate and name some groups by itself.
Users can also create their own groups by weighting a number of other user's POVs on search results.
e.g. Crystal's "Fluffy Bunnies" group could be (3 * ILoveTwilight) + (2 x GirlzRule) + (-1 * GirlsAreGross).
This way if you really like SEO spam, you can always look for a group that likes it, or create one yourself
And Google might say: here are other groups that like these results first.
Three words: User Relevance Feedback.
In 1986 I started work on the first commercial search engine that supported "similarity searching." This was based on the Cosine Coefficient of weighted attribute vectors. As we got deeper and deeper into what made one search successful and another a flop, it became obvious that there were two prime enemies of successful searching.
For example, a query of "man versus machine" (actually run by Esther Dyson in our offices), produced an apparently random mix of articles about chess-playing computers, labor strikes over factory automation, and some guy towing a locomotive with his teeth (it's been over 20 years, so I don't remember the exact results). She hesitated for a moment, then said, "Oh! They really are all about people and machines, but how do I narrow it down to what I meant, which was more along the lines of the labor articles?"
We already had an answer to this by the time she visited us. Our solution (based on the work of Salton and Buckley) was to allow the user to say, "Results 1 and 3 are irrelevant, but result 2 is highly relevant." We would then take the attribute vectors for the articles and raise or lower the importance of those terms in the new query vector. After the first round of relevance feedback, the results often got downright spooky. Why? Because a) we now had a lot more terms to work with, and b) the additional terms helped to disambiguate terms like "bank." E.g., mention of levee construction probably meant this was a "river bank" and not a financial institution.
What does this have to do with what Google is doing? By reordering your results you are, in effect, giving user relevance feedback. I don't know what they are going to do with this information, but just getting your hands on it is a very important first step. And having you bring things to the top is doubly important, because positive relevance feedback is several times more important than negative. E.g. Tell me to drive towards San Francisco, rather than just saying I should leave Chicago.
On the downside, as mentioned by several previous posters, this opens the door to deep understanding of the user and what s/he is interest in. (Of course, they already get some of this when you click on items in a result list. They have a little JavaScript goody that records each and every click. Fortunately, there are GreaseMonkey scripts to disable this "feature.") One of my (few) customers back in the 80's and 90's said, "If you know only the questions I ask, you know too much." The customer? The NSA.
I tend to think of individual search personalization as a pain. It's another piece of state the user has to manage. But it's harmless, and some people might like it.
The trouble with sharing information about search results is that the most interested parties are, inevitably, going to be in the "search engine optimization" business. Unless Google figures out some way to prevent people from establishing huge numbers of accounts, something they've dramatically failed to do with GMail, any shared information from users will be gamed and spammed.
Does anybody use Wikia search? Unfortunately, because it's folded into Wikia.com, (the fan site wiki hosting service), Alexa doesn't produce useful stats. Wikia in total has about 10% of the traffic of "ask.com", and under 1% of Google.com. Wikia's trend is downward.
I'd be a lot less worried about Google keeping my search history as my online identity, if I could just make Google delete my history records by requesting it. I can clear my browser cache at will, but my server-stored Google records are totally out of reach.
Google can keep the aggregate statistics. But I should be able to click and delete their raw records of me. And that procedure should be periodically randomly audited, with severe penalties for contract violation if they don't actually delete my records. If that doesn't work, we need criminal penalties.
Not just Google, either. Any retained records except those protected by some other regulation (like legal, financial or perhaps health records) should be deletable on demand by the subject of the data. Getting Google to "not be evil" in this essential practice would make it a lot easier to get the rest not to be evil, too.
--
make install -not war
Proably upwards of 60% of Google email account holders first log in to check email, but remain logged in while searching. Don't forget that they pore over email to target you with adverts. I rarely visually register them - especially since they seem lifted from my email, or on my own i find more interesting sites in other ways. AND... i ALMOST ALWAYS STRIP OUT the Google url prefix that would otherwise tip off downrtream sites that my visit spang forth from google. I especially remove them because i don't want my profiles littered with search engine preambles or prefixes unrelated to a site i may share with my readers.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"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?
I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...
-Lucy-
For you who don't like this feature; what's so hard about just ignoring it? You don't like it, then don't use it. Can't be simpler, really.
It's about network effects, or maybe about reverse network effects.
If a group of people start using a technology and they become the majority, it will be difficult to live without also becoming part of their network.
Think of the telephone. Many people prefer email over the telephone, but they still have to have a phone because of reverse network effects: as the network of telephone users is very powerful thanks to the popularity of phones, the network of telephone non-users is stagnant because its members are so few that they cannot achieve powerful network effects. In essence, when the majority settles on a technology everyone else is at a disadvantage.
Let's say you don't want to be in social networking sites. But if everyone else joins in, you will have to be there as well in the end.
It's similar to software ecosystems. If everyone uses Windows, you must deal with Windows sometimes if you want to be part of society, even if you run Debian GNU/Linux or OpenBSD at home/office.
It's surely not in your best interests to see the majority adopting a technology or anything else that you don't like or feel you can't live with it.
So, if you see a technology which you don't like becoming popular, you feel you have to explain its disadvantages to the people around you, so that you can protect yourself in the case you are forced to use this technology just to order a pizza (telephone, not email), report your taxes ("works only in IE6"), or have the slightest interaction with the wider society.
I don't necessarily say that this is the right thing. I just provide a possible explanation of the motivation that makes some people to try to persuade others not to adopt a technology etc.
1: Experts Exchange can have the "solutions" viewed just by scrolling to the bottom, past off of the ads, try it sometime.
/. comments more. . .
2: I don't know whether the comments are "public" or not, if someone wants to confirm this, search for "Google", and tell me if it says "first post" under their result (yes, that was me, can't mod Google comments as "troll" yet).
I really wonder what Google aims to acomplish with this, other than another (potentially privacy-invading) way for users to both log in and to give users "another reason" to use Google over, say, Live or the decaying Yahoo! search, or continue to piss on Ask.com as a search engine.
Either that or my age is starting to show in my
Firefox 3 adds support for tagging bookmarks
Epiphany has this for ages now.
Did the trick! :)
Thanks!!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm sure it has. The chances of a random person using the latest version of Firefox are mediocre; the chances of a random person using Epiphany are negligible.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I noticed this feature last night while using Chrome to look for drivers for an old eMachines desktop. I think that anyone who's ever fixed one of those old machines knows what comes up when you search for Windows drivers -- a bunch of links pimping something called "Driver Genius" and similar payware of dubious merit. I was using Chrome at the time and I noticed these little "promote" and "remove" icons next to the links. I have to admit that I felt a little bit of schadenfreude at being able to nuke all these links before finally being able to find a link to a page that actually pointed me in the right direction.
Does this
Being paranoid..
..you're doing it wrong
Please go back to Digg.
Anyone who cares can now tweak their settings to eliminate crap. Anything which is crap-tagged a lot will probably get downgraded in the normal Google search. Google searches will become better for both tweakers and the great unwashed masses, with little effort on Google's part. They've just leveraged crowd-wisdom to improve their service.
As a side effect, Google-positive SEO will be boosted and unrepresentative SEO will be degraded, resulting in wins all around except for sites who hire SEO cowboys (and, hopefully, the cowboys themselves once word gets out).
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
Proably upwards of 60% of Google email account holders first log in to check email, but remain logged in while searching.
Just send your google search through a local mirror (eg google.co.uk) and block that mirror from registering cookies.
That way you stay logged in to gmail, but your searches stay pseudo-anonymous (pseudo, depending on whether google logs your IP ...)
When Google arrived on the scene, they used an original idea to build a really great search algorithm, which I could trust to get me to the best results quickly without a lot of cruft at the top of the list.
Well, that hasn't happened in a while. It's now quite laborious to find what I need quickly.
So let's assume that a) the folks at Google are smart, and b) they gave me a chance and some sort of small but reasonably anonymous incentive to sort of rate their search engine results.
Multiply me by a million Google users and see how fast the cruft disappears from the top of the lists again, and Google can then charge more for better advertising than their competitors because they are again ahead of the curve...
Maybe that's what this idea is all about...
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
1. Go to google.com using any browser
2. type: blah blah -expertsexchange.com
Done.
Please no one tell me I forgot 3. Profit ...or i guess, 4. Enjoy the sex change.