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Google lets you tweak its algorithms

If you ask nicely
Friday, 21 November 2008, 08:08

SEARCH OUTFIT Google has provided a tool that will let you tweak the algorithms for each search you do.

Google's SearchWiki shows an up arrow for promoting websites, an X for deleting them and a speech bubble for adding comments.

But if Google delivers useless search results, it will be possible to wipe them and you will never see them again.

The new scheme, which was announced last night, is designed to give the search engine a more personal touch.

Google will now let users reshuffle results so their favourite websites get top billing and disliked destinations get discarded the next time they enter the same request.

It is the first time Google has allowed its audience to alter the order of search results.

Spokesgoogle Marissa Mayer said that while the revisions won't change Google's closely-guarded formulas for ranking websites, the company isn't ruling out using the personalised data to change its internet searching algorithms.

However at the moment all Google wants to do is make specific sets of results more useful to each individual that comes to its search engine. µ

L'Inq
AP

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Comments
Awesome.

R.I.P Experts Exchange. I need never see your paid-for search results ever again. Good riddance..

posted by : Mark, 21 November 2008 Complain about this comment
Great, bye bye abstract-only pages!

wonderful - now I can demote all those links to Elsevier, etc., that provide the full text of articles to the Google search engine spider, but only present me with the abstract.

posted by : ElvisLives, 21 November 2008 Complain about this comment
Hmmm

I wonder how crack-proof this is. Since many people remain logged in to their google accounts all the time, will it be possible for a web page to forge requests to remove rivals or promote specific sites?

posted by : Jeff, 21 November 2008 Complain about this comment
Re: Expert Exchange

Got that right Mark. The first thing I did when I saw that I could click the X next to search items was search for "Expert Exchange" and hit the X next to the link that appeared at the top.

Good riddance.

On another note, they had this feature long ago, but removed it for some reason. I don't think it correlated results from other people though.

posted by : BB, 22 November 2008 Complain about this comment
click the cache

experts arnt such experts clicj on the google search and scroll to the bottom.

bingo its free!!

posted by : cache, 22 November 2008 Complain about this comment
FINALLY Al Goog has come up with something worth getting a Goog Account fer...

However, since I don't like being tracked pervasively ( google-apis, google-ads, googlesyndecation, google-everything-else... ), I'll be using Opera for my wiki-searches, and my narmal FF for webbing the intertubes...

Ha!

posted by : Captain Obvious, 26 November 2008 Complain about this comment
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