The last few days have been quite intriguing for us web folk. Working in a digital studio it’s easy to keep up with things by merely observing what blows back the hair of a 20-something programmer or designer. When someone starts jumping around with excitement, then you know there’s something interesting going on.
This happened twice in the past couple of days. The first time was when Gmail introduced ‘themes’ – the ability to personalise your Gmail dashboard and make it look a little more sexy. Now, in my opinion, it’s not that big a deal, since iGoogle has had this feature for a while now.
The thing that really got people hopping, was the introduction of personalised search on Google.
Basically, this means that you can customise your organic search results. You can override Google’s algorithm, and bump something that you deem more appropriate to the top.
I believe this little feature is quite exciting actually. Some thoughts off the top of my head:
- Google say that ‘The changes you make only affect your own searches.’ I think they’re lying. Just like they said (and still maintain) that ‘Using Pay-per-Click doesn’t affect Natural Listings’. Ya right.
- People have been talking about Personalised Search for some time now, with Wikipedia being touted as the obvious successor to Google, but this was never going to happen. SearchWiki, as Google call it, is the way forward… for now.
- Even if they are telling the truth, then I predict that customised search will be introduced into the community search results as part of their algorithm, soon.
- Flash monkeys and content kings will see their hard work rewarded, despite the fact that it’s not bustin’ at the seams with keywords.
Check out the official vid here:
OK, so I’m not the search guru like my esteemed colleague Mike, but I reckon this is the precursor to a greater leaning to personalisation within Google’s magical search methods.
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