Digital Design Blog

Thumbs Up For Digg-Style Google Search Program

Google Labs is running an experimental search program where the end-user can influence or refine his or her search results by tagging the results, ala TIVO, with “Like it” or “Don’t like it”.

The program also has a custom field for adding an address that is potentially more relevant to the end-user. It also has the option to save ones’ recommended site results and custom ratings. As of now, the site limits the ratings to the user only and has no impact on the broader collective. But as with all things digital you can imagine this rolling out into the collective to help the relevance ratings of search results.

The biggest problem here is that if Google starts to aggregate the data they might negate their most valuable offering, “Search Relevance”. Artificially inflating /deflating a site’s relevance can be done with the help of 50 students at 50cents an hour entering a company site as the preferred result.

I still think that Google is on to something here, however. I love the idea of tailoring my search results based on “Like it?” “Don’t like it?” idea. I have found that people’s search terms don’t just differ hugely based on e.g. “Their knowledge or habits”, but also on the fundamentals of their chosen search terms language grammar.

To narrow your search results the system needs as much specific data as you can give it. For example: Searching for “I am very hungry” versus “I am extremely hungry” yields completely different results. So, to be able to tailor my experience more to my communication and thinking style versus Google’s would be fantastic.

Being a long time Internet user I often find myself changing they way I search on different web properties. It helps to know what type of query language works betters. Google is helping to shortcut that trick by allowing end-users to get results more consistently and *explicitly*.

Since the early days I wished to have a “NEVER SHOW ME THIS RESULT AGAIN!” button. Thanks to Google it looks like I might get my wish after all.