Posts Tagged ‘search listings’
Feb 17
Don’t be evil – Google needs to listen to itself!
- Categories: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Tags: google, search history, search listings, true search
Firstly, apologies for the lack of blog posts lately, but hopefully I will be able to sustain more entries in the future!
Today I would like to talk about the fact that Google seem to be becoming the thing they seemed to despise in the beginning, when they famously used the slogan “Don’t be evil”.
This blog post at SEOmoz shows how Google are increasingly using personalised search to give you what it considers are results more relevant to you. Now, I suppose on the face of it, it sounds like a good idea right? Who wouldn’t want to see 10 listings all relevant to the search you’ve just made?
But the truth of the matter is that personalised search results can limit your view of the web. If Google is constantly trying to second guess what you want to see returned, we are not seeing true search listings.
Signing out of your account appears to not help, and presumably, Google is now tracking IP addresses and matching them to Google accounts and that’s how they can show personalised results when logged out of your Google account.
Personally Google, I want to see the 10 best results that match the phrase I have typed in – not results based on what I’ve typed in and combine it with my search history. I find it commendable that you want to make the internet easier to use, but I would prefer to have the choice of viewing standard or personalised results.