What everyone is talking about: Google's New Search
Search Plus Your World is Google's
latest search algorithm released earlier this month. You can try it out by just entering a
search term into the Google search bar. Personal results are shown at the top
of the search, and you can elect to use those or hide them. You will need to have some kind of Google
Account (Google+, Gmail, or another service that lets you log in), and you need
to be logged in when searching.
I am sure there are more complex features, but we'll keep it simple for this post.
Not a bad idea, in theory. After all, most people would rather take a recommendation
from someone they know than some stranger. But Google couldn't just
altruistically create a search that is best for users "“ they added in a few
twists that makes it almost worthless (at least in my opinion):
- You need to have a Google
profile. Ok, this makes sense. How else are they going to track your every move, know all your friends, know
what photos you posted at your 8th birthday party, and where you ate
for dinner last night, if you don't have
a "Ëœlegal' way for them to track this (ie a profile in which you've signed away
all rights to your content by using it through your account)? So while this might be slightly annoying to
the five people that have managed to avoid using any Google service that
requires a login, it certainly isn't a deal-breaker.
For the sake of this review, I searched the term "Pizza".
- Search results are biased. Not
terribly surprising, but all the personal results that came from my search were
Google+ interactions "“ and were not terribly relevant beyond the fact that they
had "Ëœpizza' in the post at some point.
- Search results don't pull from any
other sources. Google doesn't use
Twitter, Facebook, or other social media to pull personal results. The only results I see are from Google+
connections. I might as well just be
searching Google+ for these results. This really limits the benefits of
personal searching. (Although I get it "“ Google doesn't want to encourage the
use of their direct competitors. Let Facebook come out with their own search
engine if they want to be searchable.)
- The most annoying results: I see
posts and reviews from SUGGESTED contacts. In fact, the majority of the results
were from people that I don't know, am not sure why they are suggested contacts
(we probably have one friend in common), and I really don't care about their
review of a Pizza Hut in California when I live in Michigan.
What do you think? Have you tried it? One important thing this tells us, which we predicted before Google+ even launched, was that having a Google+ profile is going to influence searches. We recommend creating and posting from Google+ for SEO reasons, whether or not you care about the social aspect of the platform.
