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1. Google Co-Op Overview

2. Google Co-op was announced by Google, along with
other announcements, in May of 2006. Google Co-op
represents Google's efforts to embrace social web and
social search concepts in a major way to help improve
Google search results. Google Co-op will allow users to
contribute context, knowledge, and expertise. In
essence, Google Co-op allows users to tell Google what
web content really is by providing labels (categories) for
that content. Users will also get to "vote" on what
content they find to be valuable by subscribing to the
content of various web sites that they value. An
additional benefit to end-users is that Google Co-op
allows them, through their subscriptions, to alter their
own

3. Google search results so that the provided information
better meets their needs. It further helps end-users to
filter out spam content, or content of little or marginal
value.

4. Google Co-op is currently in beta test. As with any new
service that is being beta tested, there are still some
things being "worked out". The documentation is
somewhat limited and lacking, making it a little difficult
to understand and implement Google Co-op. The
remainder of this paper will provide a high-level
overview of Google Co-op to help individuals better
understand what it is, how they can use it, and what
they will see. Subsequent papers on the topic will delve
more into the "nitty-gritty" of how to implement it.

5. At its most basic, "social web" (aka Web 2.0) is a process
whereby users provide information and opinions, and
share them with others. It is the sharing that provides
the social aspect. Users can share information about
what they find to be valuable. A good example of this is
del.icio.us where users share links to their "favorite"
information on the web (for example, favorite articles,
or web sites about a topic etc.). Other examples of
"user-vetted", or user-contributed information, would
include Wikipedia (the open, user contributed,
encyclopedia), and DMOZ (the open directory). There
are many other examples.

6. "Social search" is the same process of humans providing
and sharing information to help improve the results that
a search engine presents to various queries. Google Co-
Op would appear to be a strong move by Google into the
social search arena.

7. Google Co-Op Components

8. Google Co-op consists of two things:

9. Topics

10. Subscribed links

11. Topics

12. Topics is simply Google's way of saying "area of
interest". Topics allow users a way to provide labels (or
tags, or categories) for information on the web. A user
does this by associating a URL with a label (for example,
www.citytowninfo.com might get the label
"destination_guide"). These labels simply tell Google
what a particular URL is all about. Users may use labels
for topics that Google already has under development,
which include: health, destination guides, autos,
computer & video games, photo & video equipment,
and stereo & home theater. Users may also develop
labels for their own topics (for example, if a user has an
interest in "wine" they may develop labels for the topic
wine,

13. which may include "wine_regions", "wine_types", etc.).

14. The process of labeling content will benefit everyone in
several ways. Labels will provide Google with a vast
amount of information about what web sites are all
about, potentially down to a very granular, or individual
page level. In addition, by taking the time to label a site,
users are essentially "voting" on what sites are valuable
to them. As these votes accumulate over time, Google
will have a clearer picture of what sites are authoritative
on a topic or topics. It is not hard to come to the
conclusion that with time, Google will start to use this
data so that sites with a lot of votes will start to appear
much higher in appropriate search results.

15. Subscribed Links

16. Subscribed links provide several very beneficial features
to both users and web publishers. Subscribed links
provide:

17. End users a means of altering or tailoring their search
engine results so that they receive more relevant search
results as well as results from sources that they "trust"

18. End users a potential means of saving time since the
results that they need may actually appear in the search
results, negating the need to click through to the site

19. End users another mechanism to "vote" on sites that
they find to be valuable or authoritative by going
through the process of subscribing to those sites

20. Publishers with another means to make content
available to end users

21. With subscribed links, publishers can make a subset of
their information available to end users by submitting
their subscribed links via an XML file to Google, and
letting users know how and where to subscribe. Users
who value the content of particular publishers will
subscribe to their subscribed links. In so doing, the
content for subscribed sites will appear at the top of
search results when the users searches on relevant
terms. In essence, the user alters their own search
results by subscribing, so that content that they find to
be more valuable appears at the top of search results.

22. As a site gains more subscribers, Google will most likely,
with time, come to see it as more authoritative. As has
already been mentioned earlier in this article, it is not
hard to jump to the conclusion that such a site will
appear higher up in Google search results for relevant
search terms over time.

23. Google Co-Op Will Improve the Content That Users See

24. The whole process of labeling and subscribing has the
added benefit of being self-vetting. This means that
spam sites, advertising sites, and sites that provide
marginal or useless content will be pushed down in
search results. Social web dynamics in action means that
users simply will not bother to label or subscribe to poor
quality sites in high enough volumes for them to be seen
as authoritative and useful. The end result for all should
be better and more useful search results.

25. What Users Will "See"

26. At this point you may be wondering how users actually
see Google Co-op search results. Google Co-op content
appears to the end user in one or more of three ways:

27. As "Refine Results": Refine results are search
refinements for the topic. This is a set of predetermined
categories that can be used to refine a search for a given
topic. For example, a search on "Boston" will yield a
"Refine results for boston:" box at the top of their
search results with the following categories: Dining
guides, Lodging guides, Attractions, Shopping, Suggested
itineraries, and Tours & day trips.

28. As "Subscribed Links": A Subscribed Links results box
that presents the results from one or more of the
authoritative sources to which a user has subscribed at
the top of Google's search results. For example, if the
user were subscribed to citytowninfo.com, and they
searched on "Boston", they would see an "About
Boston, MA" subscribed links box at the top of their
search below the "Refine results".

29. "Labels": Labels appear for result items within a search.
A label is a tag that appears below a search result. For
example, an item after the title and brief description
might say "Labeled Dining guides". These labeled sites
show up below the subscribed links, but above Google's
organic search results.

30. Users who do nothing will see search refinements for
the health and destination guides topics areas at the top
of any relevant set of Google search results (try a quick
Google search on "Boston" to see "Refine results for
Boston"). This is because Google subscribes everyone to
those topics by default. In fact, there does not appear to
be any way to unsubscribe from these two topics. Users
will also see relevant labels from these two topics below
search results for sites that have been annotated by
users or publishers.

31. Users who subscribe to the subscribed links of web sites
and search on terms that are relevant to those
authoritative sources will see items from those sources
at the top of their search results. The end-user's search
results are altered from what they would "normally" see
and they will see the "Refine Results", "Subscribed Links
Boxes", and "Labels" for the sites with which they have
subscriptions. By subscribing, the user alters their own
search experience so that it is more relevant and
tailored to their own needs.

32. To see this in action go to Google's directory and
subscribe to one or more of the listed subscribed links,
or try subscribing to citytowninfo.com's subscribed link.
If you subscribe to citytowninfo.com, a quick search on
"Boston" yields both the "Refine results" from Google as
well as a "Subscribed Links" "About Boston, MA" box
from citytowninfo.com.

33. Conclusion

34. While still in its infancy, and going through the growing
pains that are normal for services that are in beta test,
Google Co-op clearly has a lot of promise to enable
Google to provide much more powerful and relevant
search results to users. As the volume of labels and
subscribed links grows, as well as user "votes" by going
through the process of labeling sites and subscribing to
sites, Google Co-op will become a very powerful and
important force impacting both how people go about
searching, as well as what search results actually appear.

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