White Hat Media News
01/09/2008 | Google Will Allow You to Change Search Results
Google Distinguished Engineer, (apparently that is an official title!) Ben Gomes chooses to reinvent the whole concept of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in his recent official Google Blog post. Entitled "Search Experiments, Large and Small", Gomes' post initially appears to let us know about how Google experiments with various ideas on a daily basis on Google sites around the world.It's all pretty mediocre stuff including how Google tried out differing amounts of white space around the top entry in the list to make it stand out. It isn't until you get to the last bit of the post when, almost as a throwaway remark, Gomes details an experiment where search users can move the results up or down the rankings; they can also add their own comments. When you look at the example more closely you can see an x in a box next to each entry. This would appear to indicate that you can delete entries, although Gomes doesn't mention this in his blog.
Gomes does not specify how Google would progress the concept of interactive search. There are already so called "social search" sites which include Digg and StumbleUpon that allow user interaction. Is Google planning to compete with these sites? There is also speculation in the blogosphere that Google is eyeing up Digg for a potential acquisition. Maybe Google has noticed how new human powered search sites, such as Mahalio and Wikia Search are making noises in the search industry and chooses to keep tabs on developments.
Significantly, Gomes omits to indicate whether Google plans to allow users to modify publicly displayed search results or whether they only apply to private search. If Google is looking to revolutionise the way we search on the internet, they would need to put in place measures that will prevent abuse of a more open approach. For instance, how would Google stop website owners from relegating or even deleting their competitors' sites from the search rankings?
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