Forum Moderators: open
[labs.google.com...]
And then on the SERPs see the slider!
This is unbelievable. I don't know what this means for:
1. SEOs
How do you optimize your keywords now - a different approach is required now....
2. Other search engines
This looks to me like some kind of customer lock-in (though a weak one, I agree). How would other SE react?
Very interesting developments today.
-Mervyn
Editing your profile to "health" and "diseases"
and then searching for "virus" - slowly fades away the "computer virus" results to the bottom of the SERP
Edit Profile - Regions - United States - Iowa
similar to what we Europeans are offered in e.g. "pages from Belgium [ww.google.be]"
[local.google.com...] should do the same but does not seem to work for me "state-wise"
What is the ball logo to the left of each search result as you slide the bar?
Why do some have the ball logo and others don't?
If it is tied to the directory, they don't allow you to go deeper thus limiting your results to top level sites.
What do the colored balls next to my search results mean?
The balls indicate which results Google thought were more relevant to your search, based on the interests you entered in your profile. As you move the slider to the right to increase the degree of personalization, these results move closer to the top.
[labs.google.com...]
Now if I could personalize search to enter my DISinterest in affiliate shopping, hotels, and directories, the results would be really really cool!
:-)
Overall it looks like a great new feature but still has kinks.
I noticed the slider actually took a lot of the most relevant sites out of the top of listings moving them further down the page.
That's easy : turn off your computer and find a new line of work.
I have a site about "topic". It is #1 for several keyword searches related to that topic. If I tick the personalise box associated with that topic and then personalise the result, the #1 listing disappears completely out of the results! If I set personalise back to minimum, then the #1 result returns.
I need to work out what I need to do to convince Google that this site really is about "topic" beyond all the content being about that topic, 90% of the incoming links being from sites about the same topic, or several very closely related topics (several are THE authority site), and 75% of the outgoing links being also closely related.
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See also: [webmasterworld.com...]
Does Canada count as "Polar Regions" instead?! ;)
<joking>Little-known fact: thanks to the metric system, Canadians are about 1.6x smarter than Americans. ;) </joking>
"the new adventures of googleguy"?
And, last year he made a comment about what he could see out of his office window.
If you go on a Google tour, keep 'em peeled. :-)
Unknown factor: did he move office between postings?
Yes. On average, I figured out once that I've moved to a new location every 5 months while at Google. We tend to shift around a lot as we work on different projects. :)
Interesting to watch the stuff move, but it's clear this is pretty awful in terms of trying to accomplish what it intends. Sites that obviously should move up via greater personalization often don't get the triple globes. Sites that have everything similar get treated differently, etc. Long way to go.
If you've got Safari, we've heard reports that changing the user agent to Mozilla can fix things.
Well, it works now like that ... but still very clumsy.
Guess I don't get it. I setup my profile to Music / Rock and went and did a search for my favorite band. The results were as they usually are, with the band's official site No. 1 and the best fan site No. 2. Then as I move to "max" personalization, this one odd site I've never heard of started moving up the list and eventually took over the No. 1 spot. This site doesn't hold a candle to the regular results, so ... why is it No. 1? Hmmmm. Better keep playing to figure this out. Or maybe RTFM is appropriate here. :)
Google needs more data for it to work better; or should I say that they need to do more processing of the data that they already have in order to get to the core themes of the page.
I just realised that the actual word that I ticked for the personalisation doesn't appear anywhere on that #1 page that drops out of the listings the more personal you get, even though the topic of the page really is all about the topic that I ticked.
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Oh, heck. What a pain that you can't quote specific examples, 'cus this is a peach.
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Heh, Googleguy. Nice to see your sense of humour on my mild ribbing.
