Google’s facelift is official, Personalized Web Search

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Google’s facelift is official, Personalized Web Search

March 29, 2004

Dogtoe reports that Google’s new look is official. Previously you could get the new look with a bookmarklet.

I also came across this Personalized Web Search at Google Labs which I think is new (could someone confirm?). You can specify a profile (which is saved in a cookie), search for something, and move a slider to increase or decrease the degree of personalization of your search results.

Google Personalized Web Search slider screenshot

That’s pretty awesome.

Google has developed new algorithms that dynamically reorder results by weighting the interests you enter in your profile. When you move the slider, it recalculates and rearranges the results to add more or less emphasis on your profile information.

Posted by Chu Yeow at March 29, 2004 SGT |

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| Category: Neat Stuff

9 Comments & TrackBacks (Add yours)

The paper doll icon that precedes each comment is an idea conceived by Vanessa Tan.

This is the first time I’ve seen the Personalized Web Search. :)

Posted by: Brian on March 29, 2004 5pm

Awesome. Definitely, and first time I’ve seen it. Must be all kinds of interesting social engineering (or reverse social engineering) that coudl be done with this based upon search results…

Posted by: Luke on March 30, 2004 6am

Bookmark
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Posted by: PukiWiki/TrackBack 0.1 on March 30, 2004 9am

I don’t understand why personalized results are cool, I’m probably missing something though. If I search for “windows xp install hang” (for example, as I did earlier today) I’m not looking for anything that someone else wouldn’t be looking for, so personalization doesn’t help. My profile includes fitness, video games, and computers. It seems like the personalized results might make results worse, since it might try to find fitness-related pages talking about Windows XP, or fitness tracker programs for Windows. If I search for “visual regexp,” personalization isn’t so helpful either. Maybe I use Google for different things than other people use it for.

Posted by: Keith Lea on March 30, 2004 12pm

The actual cool part that is awesome is the ability to turn off personalization on-the-fly via the slider. If you don’t need personalization, or if it’s inappropriate for the things you’re looking for, just slide the slider to zero personalization.

My point is, you can decide easily whether or not you actually want personalization.

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on March 30, 2004 5pm

Hey, just wanted to say that your blog is extremely well-programmed. I still can’t believe that it’s all done in moveable type! Keep up the good work!

Posted by: David on March 30, 2004 8pm

No longer the frontline
Google’s test design is now the default. And just a few days old, Google Labs’s Personalized Web Search allows you to get rid of all those search results you’d never want to see.

Posted by: Minh’s Notes on April 1, 2004 11am

Pickpocket
Google gets personal (redemption in a blog). GMail screenies; more (squarefree).

Posted by: hao2lian's bl@g on April 5, 2004 3pm

Google Labs has always had some mad stuff in it. For those of you interested I had a look at the robots.txt for google. Which reveals a few different looks.

Posted by: Paul Anthony on April 13, 2004 9pm

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