Google personalization and new search features: help or hindrance? Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services NFF, 1st November 2010 This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Email: karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk Web site: http://www.rba.co.uk/ Blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/karenblakeman Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/karenblakeman Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/karenblakeman authorSTREAM http://www.authorstream.com/User-Presentations/karenblakeman/ LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenblakeman or just Google “Karen Blakeman” 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 2

Themes for this session New search features How does Google personalise search and results? Can you control what Google is doing? 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 3

Where are you? IP address location (not mobile geo-location) Unless you tell it to do otherwise, Google present s you with what it thinks is the relevant country version e.g. google.co.uk, google.no “local” content is given priority and more emphasis search features vary from one country to another, especially new services e.g.Google Instant Access to some non-Google sites and information blocked to those outside of local “region/area” e.g. BBC iPlayer Location/Country not always correct 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 4

Learn How Google Works: in Gory Detail http://www.ppcblog.com/how-google-works/ 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 5 Already out of date!!

Schmidt: Listing Google’s 200 Ranking Factors Would Reveal Business Secrets http://searchengineland.com/schmidt-listing-googles-200-ranking-factors-would-reveal-business-secrets-51065 Here are just a few search term in HTML title tag, header tags, URL search term in anchor text leading to page terms in content near the top of the page frequency of search terms in the page Page Rank of a page, authority of the entire domain speed of web site country version of Google the server carrying out your search searching for company, person, hot topic what you have searched and clicked on before semantic search 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 6

Is your web history on? Switched on for everyone by default Google adjusts search results according to past page views Stored in cookies so browser and machine specific See: Personalized Search for everyone http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html Google web history 31 October 2010 7 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Google first page results 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 8 Results from Google News & blogs Latest results - rolling feed of headlines from Twitter, blogs, discussions

Google first page results 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 9 Images Wikipedia article Blog posting listing videos YouTube video Results from my “social circle”: Twitter, RSS feeds, FriendFeed, Google Wave contacts etc.

Google results – a person 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 10 Latest results. Rolling feed of headlines from Twitter, blogs, discussions About/CV page LinkedIn profile Slideshare profile

Google results - person 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 11 Blogger profile Twitter profile Yasni profile Mashed Library wiki activity Facebook profile

Google social search Included in your search results if you are signed in to your Google account - maybe 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 12

Google social search 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 13

Your social circle 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 14 List of direct and secondary connections

Your social circle – social content 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 15

Google side bar 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 16

Google sidebar (more search options) 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 17 Google.co.uk suddenly lost Social search and location Google. no (Trondheim) – has location option Google.co.uk 3 weeks ago: Social and Location

Google Realtime http://www.google.com/realtime Said to search Twitter, Facebook, news, blogs but Twitter dominates “Anytime” loses sort by date/time and timeline 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 18

Google Instant Coming to a Google near you (depends on country, browser, platform) Already the default on Google.com On Google.co.uk if you are signed in to your Google account Tries to predict what you are searching for as you type and changes results accordingly 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 19

Yahoo was there in 2005... 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 20

Google Instant Only displays 10 results at a time Lose the Wonderwheel option from the left hand menu on results page Can no longer disable suggestions from Settings page To disable Google Instant click on “Google Instant is on” link next to search box on results page and select the off option or switch it off under Settings See Karen Blakeman's Blog: Google Instant – display results as you type http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/09/09/google-instant-display-results-as-you-type/ Karen Blakeman's Blog: Seriously irritating things about Google Instant http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/09/10/seriously-irritating-things-about-google-instant/ 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 21

Turning off Instant Search and suggestions Turn both Google suggestions and Instant search off type http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en in the address bar of your browser and click search or press the return/enter key. Turn Instant search off but keep the Google suggestions: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&instant=0&hl=en Turn both services back on: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&instant=1&hl=en 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 22

Starred results Starred results – need to signed in to a Google account http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/stars-make-search-more-personal.html 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 23 Click on the star to mark it as a “favourite” Starred pages will appear at the top of results for similar searches This search is on UK average house prices 1980..2009

A feature that still annoys me... Automatically looks for variations on a term Force exact match by preceding term with a plus sign or using double quote marks around the word or phrase 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 24

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Thanks to Even Flood for this example in GS on exploration of the Norne oil field GS unhelpfully looks for Horne as well! No cached version to quickly show where or if original search terms occur in the document 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 26

Images 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 27

Images 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 28

Similar images 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 29

Images - colour Only one colour can be selected 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 30

Images – creative commons, public domain Google advanced image search - use the pull down menu under usage rights Public domain carry out your search in the image search bar and when the results appear on screen add &as_rights=cc_publicdomain to the end of the string in the URL/address bar of your browser but may not be really in the public domain – cheque the web site hosting the photo 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 31

Images – Google Swirl Image Swirl in Google Labs http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/ Google experiments with Image Swirl http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2009/11/19/google-experiments-with-image-swirl/ Seems to concentrate on patterns and shapes rather than colours 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 32

Images – Google Swirl 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 33

Google Public Data Explorer http://www.google.com/publicdata/ See review at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/03/27/google-public-data-explorer-fine-as-far-as-it-goes/ - getting better 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 34

Google Squared 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 35

Fusion Tables http://www.google.com/fusiontables/ 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 36

Fusion Tables 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 37

Fusion Tables 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 38

What Google knows about you? Do you have a Google account - gmail, maps, Docs ? Do you know which Google services and products you are using? Do you know if you have made that information private or left it public? many of Google’s services and applications are public by default Check your dashboard “What Google knows about you(1): check your dashboard” http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/06/24/what-google-knows-about-you1-check-your-dashboard/ sign in to your Google account http://www.google.com/dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 39

Google dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 40

Google dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 41

Google dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 42

Google dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 43

Google Health 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 44

Google Health 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 45

Google dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 46

Google dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 47

Google dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 48 Used to purchase Google Adwords on 2 occasions

Google dashboard 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 49 “Is this everything? In a nutshell, not yet.” “There are other kinds of data that Google records when you use its services, but which are not associated with your Google Account. To protect your privacy, that data is intentionally kept separate from your Google Account and thus is not visible on this page. “ ??

Check your ad preferences So you don’t have ad preferences? Check out http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ Do not have to be signed in to a Google account “Preferences” based on pages you view Information stored in cookies different browser, different machine = different cookies Ad preferences are used on any site with Google ads Sometimes extends to determining content You can remove and add categories, or opt out all together You will still see ads if you opt out but they will be generic 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 50

31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 51 Ad preferences ??

Google ad preferences in action 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 52

Google ad preferences in action 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 53

Google Labs http://labs.google.com/ 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 54

Keeping up to date Google has dozens of blogs http://www.google.com/press/blogs/directory.html main one is Official Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ Google Blogoscoped http://blogoscoped.com/ Search Engine Land: Must Read News About Search Marketing & Search Engines http://searchengineland.com/ Karen Blakeman’s Blog http://www.rba.co.uk/workpress/ Phil Bradley's weblog http://philbradley.typepad.com/ 31/10/2010 www.rba.co.uk 55