Google has made one of the biggest changes to its search engine in a decade, allowing results to be personalized.
The move has not been welcomed. Notably, Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan has posted several examples of searches that show how the new search feature “pushes Google+ over relevancy,” saying that the new feature “clearly” favors Google’s social network over the results of other social networks. The tool also offers users the option to toggle between searching their own personal data and searching the Web as a whole.
Google fellow and search developer Amit Singhal told The Washington Post that the new option was supposed to improve individual experiences by making search results more personal, but many say that the new feature does just the opposite.
Here’s a quick primer on what the program is and what folks are saying about it.
What does “Search plus Your World” do? Essentially, Search Plus Your World, or SPYW as it’s been dubbed by the acronym-happy technosphere, uses Google+ a new source for search results. Related Google+ page and people suggestions appear in a box on the right-hand side of search pages, publicly available content posted by people in your Google+ network on the Web shows up in search results and any content shared privately with you on Google+ will also pop up in response to your queries.
Google+ profiles are also a part of search results now, and are promoted above other results. So, for example, if I do a search for “Elizabeth” in Google with the personalization turned on, Google points me to the Google+ profiles of friends with that name as I type my query and returns links to those profiles in my results.
How do I turn it on? Google is turning on SPYW for you, with personal results appearing throughout search query returns. Users can also choose to search only their personal network by clicking a link to “personal results” that appears at the top of search pages.
How do I turn it off? For specific searches, you can turn off the personalization by hitting the globe icon on the new toggle switch that appears on every search page. If you want to disable the feature permanently, head to the “search settings” menu under the cog icon that appears in the upper right-hand corner of your window when signed into your Google Account. In the “search results” menu, scroll down to “Personal results” and click “do not use personal results.”
What privacy concerns have been raised? The idea of having Google search through users’ personal data — even if it’s data they’ve already agreed to share with Google — is enough to make even the most open person think twice.
Google, anticipating this anxiety, has taken pains to let people know that it’s putting all search results under the HTTPS protocol, so that no one should be able to look at any individuals’ search results and therefore reveal the private content that’s become a part of Google’s searches. The company also, as mentioned above, has made it fairly easy to turn off the personalized results.
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