Google gets all-personal…

Google has unveiled a new tool that allows people to make their Web searches more personal and get better results. It’s just the latest in a string of announcements from the major search companies as competition in the industry heats up.

Google Personalised Search, available for testing at the Google Labs page (http://labs.google.com/Personalised/), lets people create a profile of their own interests. This in turn then influences the Web site links shown when they conduct a search.

The basic concept is pretty simple. The people who use the system are best placed to know what topics are most important to them. This is a way to personalise results so they get the most relevant responses.

People can identify up to 216 areas of interest, from art history to motorcycles. The level of personalisation can be adjusted with a slider bar at the top of each search results page.

Is this an important aspect for users of Search Engines?

The ability to tailor search results to a particular person is considered the holy grail of search technology. However, few companies have released real-world versions of “personalised search”, probably an indication of the true complexities and difficulties involved in developing such search tools.

What exactly is Google personalised web search?

Because no two searchers are the same, Google is trying to make its search results as relevant as possible to each individual. Google Personalised web search returns customised search results that are based on a profile created by a user describing their interests. By way of example, people who are interested in the outdoors will see different, or more relevant sites when they search on "bass" than those people who have an interest in music.

You can create and save a “profile” that will tune the results of your search based on your preferences. Your results can be instantly rearranged by dragging a slider at the top of the page to go from no personalisation to full personalisation or anywhere in between. Google has developed new ways of listing results by weighting the interests you enter in your profile. When you move the slider, it recalculates and rearranges the results to add more or less emphasis on your profile information.

Ok, so far so good, just how exactly do I do this?

Firstly, you need to visit Google’s “test” site on the Web http://labs.google.com/Personalised and enter your preferences into your “profile”. To save your preferences for Google Personalised web search, select interest categories on the Edit Profile page. Click on the links to expand a category into its subcategories, and then check the box next to those subcategories you'd like Google to use in determining your Personalised results. Click on the “Start Searching” button when you've finished selecting your interests. Your preferences will be saved and used in future searches with Google Personalised web search.

To change your preferences, visit the Edit Profile page. A link to edit your profile is also available on each search result page as well as on the Google Personalised web search home page.

To remove your profile for Google Personalised web search, go to the Edit Profile page, and then click on the "Delete all preferences" link in the grey box on the left.

What do the coloured balls next to my search results mean?

The balls indicate which results Google thought were more relevant to your search, based on the interests you entered in your profile. As you move the slider to the right to increase the degree of personalisation, these results move closer to the top.

How has this new system been received by the public so far?

Thus far some search experts have given the new service a cool response. Some tests have shown the tool will sometimes return results that do not match a person’s interest, especially if more than one area is selected. However most seem to agree that personalised search is really significant.

It should be noted, that the tool is still in its beta-testing stage and will probably change based on feedback from people who use it. Search engines can take two approaches in personalising search results, that is asking the user to supply personal information, or gleaning information about people from their Web surfing habits or patterns.

The online bookseller Amazon.com does the same thing but in a slightly different way. It monitors what people buy and then offer Personalised recommendations the next time they shop. Eurekster, a new search site, monitors which search results a user clicks on and gives those results more importance in subsequent searches.

Google, on the other hand, is relying exclusively on profiles created by users.