Google Launches Personal Search for Everyone

In what may be the biggest change ever to come to the search engine results page, under the cover of a Friday afternoon, Google announced that Personalized Search is now the default behavior even if you are not logged in to a Google account.

"Today we're helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than 40 languages." - Google Blog

That's a stunning statement that basically means every computer connecting to Google is now being personalized regardless if you have signed in or not. Every desktop, laptop, work computer, family computer, kiosk, Internet café - every computer that accesses Google is now being personalized.

The possible impact to all is staggering.

What is Personalized Search?

Personalized Search is when the search results are customized away from the default Google results to reflect historical queries done on the computer at hand. Google is saving all searches and the search results that were clicked on - in order to provide search results that are supposedly tailored to the interests and needs of the searcher.

For example, if John searches for 'widgets' today and begins to use the top site regularly and then continues to research 'widgets' tomorrow, it is presumed that top site will weigh highly in his Personalized Search. This higher ranking will be for the original keyword phrase as well as other related keywords. If a new Web site pushes hard to reach the top spot John may never see it because his Personalized Search is still weighing very strong the site he used in the past.

Here are some pictures I've done for a search. To trigger the instance of Personalized Search while NOT signed in to Google I first searched on the keyword, 'Chicago'. Next, I searched for, 'Internet Marketing'. This triggered an explicit notification:

The red arrow points to a link titled, 'View Customizations'. This is where Google is telling me Personal Search is running and that based upon things they know about me personally, they have altered the search results. I can read more about it by clicking the link:

Comments

• By Srikanth Chada on Thursday, February 18, 2010
   

  Interesting article

  The red arrow points to a link titled, 'View Customizations'. This is where Google is telling me Personal Search is running and that based upon things they know about me personally,