Google Personalization and New Search Features: help or hindrance?

Google personalization and new search features: help or hindrance? Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services NFF, 1st November 2010 This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

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01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Themes for this session
New search features
How does Google personalise search and results?
Can you control what Google is doing?

Where are you?
IP address location ( not mobile geo-location)
Unless you tell it to do otherwise, Google present s you with what it thinks is the relevant country version e.g. google.co.uk, google.no
“ local” content is given priority and more emphasis
search features vary from one country to another, especially new services e.g.Google Instant
Access to some non-Google sites and information blocked to those outside of local “region/area” e.g. BBC iPlayer
Location/Country not always correct

Learn How Google Works: in Gory Detail
http://www.ppcblog.com/how-google-works/
01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk Already out of date!!

Schmidt: Listing Google’s 200 Ranking Factors Would Reveal Business Secrets
http://searchengineland.com/schmidt-listing-googles-200-ranking-factors-would-reveal-business-secrets-51065
Here are just a few
search term in HTML title tag, header tags, URL
search term in anchor text leading to page
terms in content near the top of the page
frequency of search terms in the page
Page Rank of a page, authority of the entire domain
speed of web site
country version of Google
the server carrying out your search
searching for company, person, hot topic
what you have searched and clicked on before
semantic search

Is your web history on? Switched on for everyone by default
Google adjusts search results according to past page views
Stored in cookies so browser and machine specific
See: Personalized Search for everyone http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html
Google web history 1 November 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Google first page results 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk Results from Google News & blogs Latest results - rolling feed of headlines from Twitter, blogs, discussions

Google first page results 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk Images Wikipedia article Blog posting listing videos YouTube video Results from my “social circle”: Twitter, RSS feeds, FriendFeed, Google Wave contacts etc.

Google results – a person 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk Latest results. Rolling feed of headlines from Twitter, blogs, discussions About/CV page LinkedIn profile Slideshare profile

Google results - person 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk Blogger profile Twitter profile Yasni profile Mashed Library wiki activity Facebook profile

Google social search
Included in your search results if you are signed in to your Google account - maybe

Google social search 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Your social circle 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk List of direct and secondary connections

Your social circle – social content 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Google side bar 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Google sidebar (more search options) 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk Google.co.uk suddenly lost Social search and location Google. no (Trondheim) – has location option Google.co.uk 3 weeks ago: Social and Location

Google Realtime
http://www.google.com/realtime
Said to search Twitter, Facebook, news, blogs but Twitter dominates
“ Anytime” loses sort by date/time and timeline

Google Instant
Coming to a Google near you (depends on country, browser, platform)
Already the default on Google.com
On Google.co.uk if you are signed in to your Google account
Tries to predict what you are searching for as you type and changes results accordingly

Yahoo was there in 2005... 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Google Instant
Only displays 10 results at a time
Lose the Wonderwheel option from the left hand menu on results page
Can no longer disable suggestions from Settings page
To disable Google Instant
click on “Google Instant is on” link next to search box on results page and select the off option
or
switch it off under Settings
See
Karen Blakeman's Blog: Google Instant – display results as you type
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/09/09/google-instant-display-results-as-you-type/
Karen Blakeman's Blog: Seriously irritating things about Google Instant
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/09/10/seriously-irritating-things-about-google-instant/

Turning off Instant Search and suggestions
Turn both Google suggestions and Instant search off type http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en in the address bar of your browser and click search or press the return/enter key.
Turn Instant search off but keep the Google suggestions: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&instant=0&hl=en
Turn both services back on: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&instant=1&hl=en

Starred results
Starred results – need to signed in to a Google account
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/stars-make-search-more-personal.html
01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk Click on the star to mark it as a “favourite” Starred pages will appear at the top of results for similar searches This search is on UK average house prices 1980..2009

A feature that still annoys me...
Automatically looks for variations on a term
Force exact match by preceding term with a plus sign or using double quote marks around the word or phrase

Thanks to Even Flood for this example in GS on exploration of the Norne oil field
GS unhelpfully looks for Horne as well!
No cached version to quickly show where or if original search terms occur in the document

Images 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Similar images 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Images - colour
Only one colour can be selected

Images – creative commons, public domain
Google advanced image search - use the pull down menu under usage rights
Public domain
carry out your search in the image search bar and when the results appear on screen add &as_rights=cc_publicdomain to the end of the string in the URL/address bar of your browser
but may not be really in the public domain – cheque the web site hosting the photo

Images – Google Swirl
Image Swirl in Google Labs
http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/
Google experiments with Image Swirl
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2009/11/19/google-experiments-with-image-swirl/
Seems to concentrate on patterns and shapes rather than colours

Images – Google Swirl 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Google Public Data Explorer
http://www.google.com/publicdata/
See review at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/03/27/google-public-data-explorer-fine-as-far-as-it-goes/ - getting better

Google Squared 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Fusion Tables
http://www.google.com/fusiontables/

Fusion Tables 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

What Google knows about you?
Do you have a Google account - gmail, maps, Docs ?
Do you know which Google services and products you are using?
Do you know if you have made that information private or left it public?
many of Google’s services and applications are public by default
Check your dashboard
“ What Google knows about you(1): check your dashboard”
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/06/24/what-google-knows-about-you1-check-your-dashboard /
sign in to your Google account
http://www.google.com/dashboard

Google dashboard 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Google Health 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Google dashboard 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Google dashboard 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk Used to purchase Google Adwords on 2 occasions

Google dashboard 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk “ Is this everything? In a nutshell, not yet.” “ There are other kinds of data that Google records when you use its services, but which are not associated with your Google Account. To protect your privacy, that data is intentionally kept separate from your Google Account and thus is not visible on this page. “ ??

Check your ad preferences
So you don’t have ad preferences?
Check out http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
Do not have to be signed in to a Google account
“ Preferences” based on pages you view
Information stored in cookies
different browser, different machine = different cookies
Ad preferences are used on any site with Google ads
Sometimes extends to determining content
You can remove and add categories, or opt out all together
You will still see ads if you opt out but they will be generic

Ad preferences 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk ??

Google ad preferences in action 01/11/10 www.rba.co.uk

Google Labs
http://labs.google.com/

Keeping up to date
Google has dozens of blogs
http://www.google.com/press/blogs/directory.html
main one is Official Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
Google Blogoscoped
http://blogoscoped.com/
Search Engine Land: Must Read News About Search Marketing & Search Engines
http://searchengineland.com/
Karen Blakeman’s Blog
http://www.rba.co.uk/workpress/
Phil Bradley's weblog
http://philbradley.typepad.com/

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Google Personalization and New Search Features: help or hindrance?

by Karen Blakeman on Oct 31, 2010

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Google Personalization and New Search Features: help or hindrance? — Presentation Transcript