Google's Experiment with Edit Search Results

Posted On 9:42 PM by Shailendra Dubey |

Google tests an enhanced version of last year's experiment that allowed users to hide search results and to move some results at the top of the page. The new experiment adds an option to comment on a search results and to view everyone's edits.

Google's impressive market share makes for convincing evidence of its skill at search. Few things are perfect, though, and the search giant is now allowing select users to alter their own results.
An experimental feature "may" or "will" be available "for only a few weeks" depending on which part of a FAQ you believe. The key points in the meantime: "This feature allows you [to] influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again while you are logged in to your Google account, you'll continue to see those changes."

The commenting system is a bit simplistic at this point, but it does have interesting implications. According to the FAQ page, I might be the only one who ever sees my comments.

How will Google use my contributions?

We'll use input from this experiment to provide websearch features such as the personalized results you see, and to decide whether features like this would be useful for other users in the future… we may also show the comments and changes that you provided to other users…

This whole thing looks like an experiment into crowdsourced search results. The FAQ page says little, implying that changing my SERPs will tweak only my results, that this whole thing is most likely temporary, and possibly nobody else will know that I did it… But it also invokes the Google Privacy Policy, and says that changes I submit can be used by Google. Perhaps they're working on a human supplemented PageRank of sorts? Digg style voting for search engine results?

Google claims that this is a limited test. They claim that it may only be around for a few weeks. But it would be interesting to see it stay for good, and to see how it evolves from here.

Source :-Google Blog Web Pro News
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