One thing that I hear a lot of when it comes to Google Search Plus Your World, is that it is making a mess of people’s SERPs. That it is pervasive. I don’t see a lot of it outside search related queries, (and there’s that handy button to turn it off ya know). But how about this? Tighten up your social circles.
See how easy that was?
And no, I didn’t remove AJ. Athough he IS a bit too present in search related queries for me. Which raises an interesting point; how about more control? It would be nice to be able to set a threshold of how much a given social graph connection influences our results. It’s better than just nuking them in some instances.
Anyway, that’s all… control your own social graph. Yet another reason to watch who you follow. Great for spammers too. If peeps don’t follow them, personalization makes it kinda hard because yer spamming yourself.
Have a great weekend folks!
On the issue of control and threshold – does putting someone into a circle (stream) of his/her own, and turning down the volume of that particular stream to: “Show fewer things from this stream in my main stream”…make a difference to the volume/influence they make to your personalised SERP?
Might be an answer if it works? If one could be bothered mind.
Yes, that’s exacty the kind of control I was thinking of. I have no idea if that’s the case, but shall endeavour to find out. It sure would be a handy feature though.
I’ll tell you a secret. I find it annoying when I show up in my own searches. And yes, it happens all too often with Search+.
The current integration is ham-fisted with no nuance to deal with intent or context. I have the default set to not include personal results and rarely toggle over.
It would be interesting to let you filter by Circle but of course that type of interface would likely be too overwhelming.
Also, what prevents someone (me perhaps) from dropping a paid ‘post’ amid all the other posts? If it were related to your area of expertise I think it might be hard to ferret that out.
It’s an interesting attempt at personalization but it’s got a long (and bumpy) way to go in my view.