WebProNews

Search wiki is the devil.

Personalized search will invent a new SEO

You use google to see what google wants you to see and yahoo alltheweb etc to see what is really out there.

More people seem to be realising this - it seems google is the only one left fighting the black hat strategies that often leave its SERPs useless.

Whatever changes google make will ultimately be manipulated by someone somewhere and they'll be forced to introduce the next counter measure.

I like a variety of results. If *I* wish to refine my search, *I* can do that myself, but in the meantime, I'd really like to see ALL of the options of what I search for. I don't want anyone dictating to me what I will see and won't see.

When you're looking for a deal on something you wish to purchase, but google will only give you the "most popular" results, you're not getting a deal, because the true deals are buried and invisible.

Heeeeelloooooo http://search.yahoo.com!

I usually find a much better selection of results there anyway.

If google continues down this path, I see them losing a lot of users along the way.

This is just a bookmarking system. It will be too easy for people to abuse it. Imagine a network that allows members to help each other - members that will vote a site to the top or vote down a site. Google will be at their mercy.

This feature is wonderful for megalomaniacs like myself. My blog and my website http://www.a7lameza.com are always #1 in my search results. Perhaps Google is doing this service for the benefit of mankind to make us feel good about ourselves?

I think this is a sign, that it's only a matter of time until systems like this shut out the small businesses trying to compete with the big dogs.

Better establish yourselves as authorities on your subjects ASAP, or the dream will die with the implementation of more things like this.

I have Google's personal search and I agree that it is nothing more than bookmarking. But I bet Google has plans to use the data (ie the number of people bookmarking the site) to determine where to place sites organically.

I'm pretty sure the "favoriting" of sites are only going to shut out the up and coming sites that will never see the traffic they could have if the search results were only rated by content and keywords.

If we let the search results be tainted with favorite only sites, where will a new site get exposure?

It's got it's merrits, but these only come to the fore if people using the system are perfectly honest. The problem is that it can be mis-used. I've voted down a site that I found to be full of spam- it's a competitor's site, and posted a comment against the site to that effect. My issue- as I see it is that Google has to tread very carefully if it wants to stay top of the search engine leader board. I think that they're getting a little ahead of themselves and could permanently damage the way the internet is used.

The internet is currently experiencing a growth in online sales that appears to be approximately 16% year on year, whilst highstreet sales are declining. Google may be top of the leader board for sales and advertising, but in this dog eat dog world, web designers are going to start wondering what the point of SEO is? Take nofollow for example- Google's using this to target outbound links that web designers don't want Google's spider to follow. It only applies to Google and this is in effect leading to some very nasty tactics in SEO. You can now get to the top of other search engines by posting on blogs and review sites- automatic inclusion of rel nofollow is not recognised by msn or yahoo????- so it lures many website/ blog owners into a false sense of security and they let any joe post to their site with links. Similar tactics on google's search preferences/ comments could seriously damage Google- webmasters and SEOer's are out for themselves- they're going to devalue the competition wherever possible and this could be a great way of doing just that.

Google's overstepping the mark now and could see it's search use being hit, simply because- in applying too many control measures to filter spam and black hat techniqes, it's going to start inadvertantly catching good, honest sites and sandboxing them.

Be careful Google. The internet's a free resource for everyone and for many website/ business owners, desperate times call for black hat techniques and the yellow pages may come back into fashion.

Richard Tanfield-Johnson
Web designer

I will keep this short and simple like some of the other comments . Ever heard about book marking, that is what this is a glorified user friendly book marking system. Hoiw many users log into google account and surf the net at the same time? Google has great ideas but they should leave this one alone.

It seems pointless that Google would want to pursue this idea, if you have a preferred site, such as the bbc.co.uk you would just go to it directly or probably already have it bookmarked. Having a preferred sites option seems to defeat the object of having a search engine in the first place...

Also how many times would you actually search for a current event, for example "inauguration day" only to find that cnn or someone like that didn't come up on the first page.

I think it would be more valuable for Google to provide result based on the geographical location of the user who has searched rather than the end user having to define what they actually like. If an end user has to to tell a search engine what they like it may as well be just a link directory.

I personally use search engines to find things I don't have time to find on the sites I usually visit. For example if I wanted to find an electrician, I would want google to know that I live in Lincoln, in the United Kingdom and tell me that there is an electrician 2 miles away, give me a map and their contact details.

if we put this into the context of current events, I would like to see Google be able to return results based on a.) what ever they deem most relevant, b.) the most relevant result in my country and c.) the most relevant local result to my location.

I agree with the above comment that using predetermined info, would mean new sites or niche sites may lose their audience based on an assumption

I don't think its a wise move from google.. Why search google if you have already decided which is your preferred result (site) . And is there any guarantee that Google will not use the prefered sites in their general SERP algorithm? In the case of inclusion it will lead to SPAM . We can see several gmail accounts created for the purpose of "preference"