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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 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. "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.

6. Google Co-Op Components

7. Google Co-op consists of two things:

8. Topics

9. Subscribed links

10. Topics

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

12. 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.

13. Subscribed Links

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

15. 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"

16. 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

17. 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

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

19. 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.

20. 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.

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

22. 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.

23. What Users Will "See"

24. 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:

25. 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.

26. 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".

27. "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.

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. Conclusion

32. 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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