Google's SearchWiki Lets Users Customize Search Results

The world’s Internet ad leader this week introduced a new tool that’s designed to help users customize search results when using its engine.

 

Officials at Google (News - Alert) say their so-called “SearchWiki” tool will help users tailor search results to meet their needs. The tool allows people to customize a search by re-ranking, deleting, adding and commenting on search results.

 

“With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site,” Google’s Cedric Dupont, a product manager, and Corin Anderson, a software engineer, wrote on the company’s blog. “You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account.”

 

The company demonstrates the product in a YouTube (News - Alert) video here.

 

Here’s how the company says the tool works in a press release issued this week.

 

Just do a Web search when logged in to a Google account, and a user can reorder results so that the site he prefers always appears first, delete a link from the search results that seems out of place, add a URL so a favorite site always shows up for that search, or post a comment so he can remind himself about a page’s content or provide recommendations to other users doing the same search.

 

Here’s how the tool looks (notice the green arrows):

 

 

The notes a user types in will only affect his search results pages and do not impact the ranking for other users when they search on Google. But to see even more information about what other users think about a search, users can go to an “All notes for this SearchWiki” link, which lets them see an aggregated view of which pages have been moved up, deleted or added, as well as the comments users have added for specific sites.

 

The SearchWiki tool is the latest boost that Google has for users of its engines – and that’s a lot, as about 60 percent of all searchers go through Google.

 

As TMCnet reported, one of the world’s largest magazine publishers this week announced that it’s poised to Google access to its prized collection of more than 10 million images.

 

Officials at Manhattan-based Time Inc. say that 97 percent of the images in their LIFE photo archive – a collection soon to be accessible through Google – never have been displayed to the public, including works from photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith.

 

According to LIFE’s president, Andy Blau, for 70 years, the magazine has been about the power of photography to tell a story.

 

“LIFE will now reach a broader audience and engage them online with the incredible depth and breadth of the LIFE photo archive from serious world events, to Hollywood celebrities to whimsical photographs,” Blau said.

 

Go here to view the archive.

 

The new SearchWiki tool is expected to be just as popular.

 

As Dupont and Anderson say, the new tool is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives.

 

“We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learnings into this release,” the pair of Google workers say. “We are constantly striving to improve our users’ search experience, and this is yet another step along the way.”