Google fitted with (temporary) Digg implant

Google wants to know what it feels like to be Digg. Google Labs is testing a new-fangled search page where users can "vote" on all those links that pop up after a keyword query. If you like a link, you hit the "like it" button. If you don't like it, you hit the "don't like it" button. And in Digg-like fashion, these clicks …

[paul]

this is weak

so we can now influence our own search results.

this idea seems redundant.

Eitherway, i'm not particularly fussed, since I no longer use a google account, and I wont be logging in to adulterate my search results.

This whole pandering to the "crowd" and letting them "vote" is getting out of hand.

next thing you know, they'll want us to pick our governments.

No, hold on...

I'll get me coat

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to avoid spam sites

I think this could be useful to filter out spam sites that show up on my search results.

Even though I'm used to refine my searches, there are some brute-force driven spam sites that manage to appear among potentially valid sites.

More than once I've wanted to exclude such sites, especially when searching blogs. I'll gladly give this new feature a try.

[Danny]

An interesting idea

So many times when searching all I get is a blizzard of directory sites. Usually when looking for odd behaviour of product X and all that shows up is sites informing you of sites flogging product X. Excluding these sites from the search would be brilliant.

I guess they don't want to affect the global status of links thus the need to be logged in. Google won't spy on us surely? Nah. If we have to log in then maybe be able to create preset search parameters to make similar searches a breeze. (If Google are reading this!)

It would be useful to be able to tag or categorise sites and be able to include or exclude them when doing searches. Or be able to specify the type of site one is looking for. User tags might be more useful (and avoid sites keyword spamming) with some kind of evolution of the fittest process so that weak tags (left by some ranter) are eventually culled and the strongest appear first. Hey, sounds like a patent idea (TM).

[The Avangelist]

Well it makes for an interesting business model

I see this as Google working out how to efficiently increase their sales for sponsored links and adverts, it seems sites like price runner and kelkoo are able to get multiple hits within the top 5 + a sponsored link, I would imagine they are paying less for sponsored links now that thier "ranking" is at its highest peak.

I agree I don't see the point of being able to influence your own searching, isn't that the whole point of bookmarks? But think about other avenues, internet cafes can work with local and global businesses to influence search results used on customers, basically anywhere there is public access machines.

There is a tangable purpose for this experiment but I cannot see it working efficiently.

[Hugh Cowan]

In Facebook too

A feature similar to this has also been implemented into Facebook on the main news feed.

[David Simpson]

if only

they would let you filter out all those sodding comparison sites - eg trustedreviews, dealtime etc by one simple action (how about a exclude moronic shopping sites checkbox?)

They did at one time experiment with a feature that let you exclude entire domains from your results forever but they seem to have dropped it

[Chris Beach]

and shopping sites

it'd also be good to remove those crappy shopping price checkers, esp the ones that pretend to review as well!

also why bookmark? if your browser loads google by default, then typing a word is probably quicker than picking it from a list (esp if you've got a smaller screen and don't have the bookmarks sidebar visible.

[Sampler]

Of course this can't go enmasse

As the spam sites will just auto vote themselves good all the time..

[Phill]

Good idea

Maybe they can pull this off. Although it would be hard. With Digg.com filtering their content worse than the Chinese goverment and the problem of "Armies of upmodders" and "Bury Brigades" trolling the search results this would need something extremely well written.

What we really need though is a way to disable the google bomb which is "wikipedia".

[Anton Channing]

Its not a bad idea.

I rarely use bookmarks, most of the time information I require is one hit. Occassionally though for various reasons I do need to go back to a page I didn't think I'd need to. And searching on Google is still easier than trying to find it in thousands of previously saved bookmarks anyway.

I might try this feature out as I may well find it useful.

As for influencing others search results, if there was some clever way of only allowing influence from users with similar tastes or somesuch, maybe only other users in my gmail address book, then that might not be too bad an idea. So long as my own preferences for any given site override those of other users. :)

[Anthony Chambers]

Backwards

So, you search for a page in Google, click the link and go to read the page. Who then goes back to the search results if they like what they've read? Why would you do that?

[bombastinator]

just another data mining system

While the changes only appear on your machine I would suspect that google will be taking notes too. T

hey'll be able to do much more accurate target marketing if they get 10 votes per search instead of one.

[Cathryn]

Unpersonalised Searches

I really don't want personalised searches. I want the same results if I search from home, where I'm sometimes logged into my google account (via gmail); if I search from work, where I'm sometimes logged into my google account; or whether I search from a friend's house, where I'm never logged in.

It's frustrating when you know what you were looking at was one of the top few results - except that now it's not.

Of course, google's answer to this would be to be logged in all the time. I'd prefer (a) to delink my google login status from my gmail login status, and (b) be able to turn off personalised searches and tracking and all that. Option a is actually preferable, because then google would stop auto-signing me into google groups based on my gmail address, when I'd really rather not use that one for posts!

[Bruno Girin]

Bayesian search?

This can be a great tool if it works in a similar way to Bayesian filters by creating personalised corpi (plural of corpus) of words related to good and bad matches (rather than 'spam' and 'legit' corpi). So that by telling Google whether you like the search results or not, it can tailor future results to a context that is right for you. For example, if I do a search with the word 'java' in it, I may be interested in the computer language, coffee or the island. Different people search for different things using the same words.

It would also be very good at filtering what you consider spam results. And because it's personalised, it would make it very difficult for spammers to circumvent it, in the same way that email spammers find it very difficult to get past a good Bayesian filter like the one in Thunderbird.

And if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. Even if you use it, the day you want a context free search, just don't login to your account.

[Anonymous Coward]

remove those crappy...

>it'd also be good to remove those crappy shopping price checkers

http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/

[Robert Grant]

@Cathryn

Google's alternative answer could be to simply not use this feature.