Google Experimental Search – SERP Control
With Google Experimental Search, you are in control of how the search results appear in the search results page. Are you sick of your competitors ranking above you or even on the same page? How would you like to derank them, or completely remove them all together? What about your best friend who has the sad story about how his blog never ranks well in Google? You can help change that for him.
Over the next few weeks, Google is running an experiment with the aim of improving the quality of their search results for end users. How this is being done involves your participation.
When you are logged into iGoogle, you may have noticed that Google has added an “Arrow Up” box, an “Arrow Down” box, and a “X” box. These three buttons gives you the ability to customize the listings found on a search results page how you see fit. If you don’t think the number one listing should be number one, you can knock it down to the number you feel is appropriate. Likewise, you can bring up lower ranking results to the top. Lastly, you can completely remove listings if you desire to.
While I mentioned that this is currently in an experimental stage. I predict that Google will soon roll out a permanent system like this in the near future. I believe also that what you do will have an influence on the overall (un-logged in) natural results in their search engine.
Google struggles with maintaining quality. Google constantly has to thwart having their system gamed with people purchasing backlinks and manulipulating the limitations within their system. In many ways, turning to, and placing value in natural human behavior is the key to success. With that said though, I believe that Google has been doing some forms of this already.
When you are logged into iGoogle and perform a search for something, your search results can be different from others based off your web history. This has currently been in effect for many months now. Virtually, Google wants to build onto their database and expand their system to become something that truly presents quality.
I am unsure whether your actions performed during the three week experiment will truly have any global effect on the results in public view; but I can say that if this system does indeed roll out permanently, what you do will have an effect on how people rank in Google.
I believe also, just like with any system in computers, this new ranking system can be gamed. I think formally Google has a weakness in being gamed because their system is based off computer generated rules. With the new system that could be potentially added onto of their existing system, gaming Google takes on a new level of thinking. Rather than asking you friends for Digg votes, now you may find yourself asking friends for “SERP Ups!”
What do you think about all this? Drop me a comment below and share your thoughts.
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20 comments
Hmmm this is very interesting and a little worrying in some ways.
If this becomes permanent then I am sure we will see companies popping up advertising “10,000 GUps” for your listings and causing a big gaming problem.
However I know Google will sort it out in the end… after all there is a reason why they are No1
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This is stupid. Get ready for people trying to figure out even more ways to exploit the system now.
This whole voting thing on sites is already been done (StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and the billion others). Google is )(@%*#% themselves over if they start this nonsense.
I wish they would just leave it alone, it is fine how it is.
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Jarret,
In ways I feel the same as you. Because instantly I can totally see how I can successfully pull off some pretty decent SERPs campaigns just by doing mass voting, assuming that voting will indeed influence ranking.. but why wouldn’t it, that would negate the purpose of creating the system.
Months ago, I wrote a post that shared a vision of people creating and growing iGoogle personalities, at the time I called this digital fingerprinting. With that same theory of growing digital identities (an identity that is perceived to enjoy fruits and vacations, another perceived to enjoy golf and fitness, etc) these superficial identities that trick the system into believing they are real people can be strongly used to influence listings in the SERPs with votes.
The days of building and growing backlinks are soon going to be over and the days of spawning fields of artificial iGoogle accounts will soon become the next method of SEO.
Besides SERP, I think it will help to determine the pagerank of a website. Obviously Google will change their methodology, giving priority to those websites with more SERP Ups!
this is going to be interesting, finally, Google will become social…
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Google will be smart about this and I feel like the IMPACT of a vote will be determined by the authenticity of the iGoogle account placing the vote. Meaning, I can sit here and register about 100 iGoogle accounts and use them to vote my own stuff. However, because these new iGoogle accounts hold no value or history in their system, their votes hold no weight.
With that said, when an iGoogle account such as my own with years of tracking and web history places a vote, this will have a degree of impact on results. (not a lot but a little)
So what about growing iGoogle accounts? This is very possible. But you have to outsmart the system too. IP address for instance. When you log into iGoogle, many things are identified. Your location, your IP address, browser, OS, etc…
Gaming Google in the future will indeed be quite difficult; however, for the ones who understand how to game their system it be a field day because there won’t be too many people around who will know how.
I don’t know… maybe I am just nuts.
Google clearly states in the video and announcement that your changes do not affect others, it is more of a note keeping system.
With that said, I think being able to see notes from other will change the way we look at the SERPS.
The video is short, but pretty cool.
Google SearchWiki
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— I really think that will change in due time.
I think it is bloody awesome, given how long stumbleupon and digg have been around it’s a wonder it wasn’t done sooner.
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Probably, just depends on what snags they run into, Google has made rare mistakes, so I am sure they will take their time letting this affect the core SERPS.
I don’t like this idea. The cause of this might be..when I will search for my research work, then it might be google will give me poor quality article because of this serp ups
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Google is trying to roll out personalized search results for user.
In future:
1. search results will be based on personal needs and search behaviors.
2. google may use the personalized results to match advert
3. no 2 person will get the same search results even if they use the same search terms
4. google trying to get rid of SEO mentality from bloggers
Ren
One thing you can count on — Google will do whatever results in more people using Google Search. That is pretty much all that matters.
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If there were a way to implement this – and avoid people gaming it – I think it would be a great tool!
But I don’t want to see “Google SERP Assistants” popping up on the Outsourcing Sites!
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Why shouldn’t G in the long run care about what the end users say ?
BTW this feature isn’t available on the italian Google.
ciao
alex
I agree with Mark, in that Google is doing this for a reason. It will be to there benefit in the long run. Maybe this is the start of the change!
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This system can be screw easily – Hope that this will not be adopted by Big G.
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This is the Google wiki, correct? The more I read the more confused I am.
A href=”http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-serp-for-wiki-jacking/”>Graywolf’s comments
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I don’t know, Garry. While I appreciate Google’s efforts to improve quality, I still don’t see how this can be any different than what they have going on right now. The ability to game this type of system is really the same as the methods being used now without it.
Even so, they should keep moving forward with trying to improve their results all the time, so it will be interesting to see what falls out of this.
I’m not how this system will end up, ultimately I could imagine people trying to game it if it affected the generic listings – beyond that for the time being, it might be useful for your searches if you have sites you often find useful or be able to de-list “clutter” sites that are never useful to you.
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Google should not do this by any means. This will cause mayhem in search engine ranking. Search engine results will look manuplated.
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