Monday, August 15, 2005

Merits of Personalized Search Results?

Usually, I turn off the “Personalized Search Results” Google is offering me whenever I notice they’re delivering them. I want to see what everyone else sees, I want to judge sites by their assigned “Google authority”, and I don’t want to miss out on any relevant site just because I surfed in another direction in the past. (I may mean “tiger” the OS today, and “tiger” the animal tomorrow.)

Today, I was searching for “City by the Sea” (a movie with Robert de Niro, my friend told me), and then turned off the personalized results I got. See the screenshot before, and compare to the screenshot after. What was missing from the non-personalized results was a review of the movie by Joe Clark – someone I know, and someone whose site I vist (and like). The top sites however stayed the same, which I find a good compromise between personalized and non-personalized results.

If you have any example of personalized Google results you came across, send me a screenshot with/ without personalization and let me know what you liked (or disliked) about the personalized result. I want to publish some of the feedback on this here.

Merits of Personalized Se ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (0)

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