The Anatomy of Personalized Google Results

By Fox, Vanessa

Your search results on Google may not be the same as my search results. Google actually tailors results for individuals to deliver the most relevant, useful results possible, which may sound like a good thing overall. But it may not be if you don’t want research for one client to influence another client or if you’re trying to replicate results for an assignment for your students. Google personalizes search in the following ways: * Search history

* Web history

* Use of other Google services

* Previous search and click behavior

* Location

* Language and country restriction

Dealing With Search History

When Google originally launched personalized search, you could opt out of it by disabling the use of your search history. However, Google has removed this option and now uses your past search history when compiling results anytime you are logged in. This generally increases searcher satisfaction. If you never click on a particular result, it may appear lower in the search results than it would otherwise. And if you visit a site frequently, it may appear slightly higher. The impact is subtle, although it may ramp up over time. Searches on most Google properties (such as images, news, and video) are factored into the equation.

If you do research for different clients, you probably don’t want one set of searches to influence the other. At one time, you could toggle personalization off when you wanted to see nonpersonalized results, but this option is no longer available. You now have two of the following options:

* Log out of your Google account. If you want to take advantage of personalized search for personal searches, but not for client research and other searches, you can log out anytime you do a nonpersonal search. Alternately, if you are doing long-term research for a particular client, you may want to create a Google account for those searches so you can take advantage of the relevance boost that personalized search provides.

* Add a flag to the URL to turn off personalized search for specific searches. The ability to quickly turn off personalized search for individual searches with a click of a link may be gone, but you can replicate this feature by adding a parameter to the search URL. While this process is a bit more cumbersome than a click, it achieves the same result. This option is best for single searches when you want to turn off personalized search (for instance, if you want to do a quick check to see if personalized search is influencing a particular result) rather than for a series of searches, since you have to add the parameter for each search. To use this option, add &pws=0 to the end of the URL that results from a search. For instance, a search for balboa peninsula results in the following URL: www.google.com/ search?hl=en&q=balboa+peninsula&btnG=Search. To disable personalized search results, add &pws=0 to the end of the URL and press Enter. The final URL for this search would be www.google.com/ search7hl=en&q=balboa+peninsula&btnG=Search &pws=0. Keep in mind that the next search you do will once again generate personalized results.

You can also install a plug-in, such as “Disable personalized search for this search,” available for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Web History

Web history uses your Web-browsing history as a signal in compiling search results. Unlike search history, you can choose to opt out of Web history. In fact, Google can only take Web history into account if you have the Google Toolbar installed. Web history is similar to search history in that it takes your past behavior into account when generating results. However, with Web history, past behavior includes all browsing across the Web, not just the sites you have accessed from google.com.

With search history and Web history, you can view a list of your searching and browsing behavior and can delete individual items. You can view trends in your Web activity (which sites you visit most often and your top searches).

As with search history, you can’t simply turn off the use of Web history as a signal for searches using the Google interface. Unlike search history, you can’t toggle this signal off for individual searches either. The only way to keep your Web history from influencing search results is to log out before doing the search. Alternately, you can opt out of Web history entirely. However, this will only prevent future browsing from influencing results. To keep past Web site visits from being used as a signal, you can clear your Web history. To pause collection of Web history temporarily, access Web History in your account and click Pause.

Use of Other Google Services

If you use the Google personalized home page or Google Gadgets, Google takes into account the feeds you subscribe to when determining which sites you favor, and it may boost those in your results. And if you use Google Bookmarks, the sites you save there will also be used as a signal.

Previous Search and Click Behavior

Google also uses the search and click behavior directly before a search. For instance, Marissa Mayer, the Google vice president of search products and user experience, recently said that previous searches give a useful signal for improving the relevance of results. If someone searches for travel and then does a subsequent search for deals, Google can provide more useful information by providing results for travel deals. This behavior is used as a signal whether or not you are logged in to a Google account, and you can’t opt out of it.

Location

Google detects your IP address and delivers customized results based on the location. For instance, if it detects you are in Germany, it may return more results from German sites, even if you are searching using the English interface. If you do a search for pizza in Seattle, Google will attempt to skew the results toward Seattle-based sites. You can’t eliminate the use of location from the search signals entirely, but you can simulate a location other than the one you are in using a browser plug-in such as the Google Global Firefox extension.

Language and Country Restriction

You can also restrict your results to include only sites in a particular language or from a particular country. You can use language as a restriction by choosing it as the search language after clicking the Preferences link.

You can use country as a restriction by accessing Google using the country-specific top-level domain (TLD) and then by choosing the restricted country search radio button. For example, the options available from the google.co.uk interface can be seen in the figure above.

The difference between this and the other personalized signals is that you have to specifically opt in to this restriction. By default, Google simply promotes sites that are in the language in which you are searching. This makes the most sense of all the personalized signals, and there’s no real way to prevent this signal.

Fluctuations Between Data Centers

Google routes searchers to the data center that will return the fastest results based on factors such as regional location and network traffic, and results at each data center may vary slightly as Google updates them. When a search is routed to the data center, it isn’t due to personalization, but it is a factor that influences why your results may be different than mine for the same search.

You can find out more from Google about personalized search results in its Web search help center at www.google.com/support/ accounts/bin/topic.py?topic=10469.

Vanessa Fox is product team lead at Zillow.com she is in charge of the teams that develop Zillow’s local advertising and email marketing products for home buyers, sellers, owners, and real estate professionals. She also was product manager for Google Webmaster Central before joining Zillow in mid-2007. Send your comments about this article to itletters@infotoday.com.

Copyright Information Today, Inc. Dec 2007

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