Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I read recently that Google were tagging certain search results as approved by medical authorities (searchable via the more: syntax) and was curious as to whether this was the start of a more general trend. My thoughts went something along the following lines.
Firstly, Google is very interested in presenting results that are customised towards an individual, but there is a certain level of resistance towards what can be perceived as an invasion of privacy.
Secondly, Google, or it's algorithm. has a great deal of respect for Wikipedia, and arguably, for the expert weighted consensus method of determining validity. Google Co-Op, in this light, can be seen as a way to tap into the same resource base.
Thirdly, Google has been setting context by its more specialised searches for some time now. This gets around the issue of personal data, and also of the fact that people wear many different hats over the course of their searching.
This led me to the possibility that Co-Op could be the beginning of a vetting process for categories like Medical, and also for authorities in the various fields. It would lead to context sensitive context setting (sorry, awkward phrasing!), whereby a user entering a term would be provided with the most popular categories of authorities s they searched.
Hopefully this makes some vague sense, and I have the suspicion that there are those of you out there who have considered this some time ago. On the off chance it might be of interest to some, I thought I'd put the idea out there.
Best wishes,
Bob
