The first question asked was about the primary search engine used by respondents.

Primary search engine:

Source: AYTM, n=400 (1/12)

Then the survey explored respondents’ attitudes toward search personalization and Google+ participation.

Do you like the idea of personalizing search results based on past searches and info from your social networking sites?

Source: AYTM, n=400 (1/12)

A minority said yes (15.5 percent) they liked search personalization. But a clear majority were ambivalent or hostile to the idea (84.5 percent). Within that majority 45 percent said they did not want search results personalized at all. Of the three types of responses the “nos” were the dominant category.

There were two other survey questions fielded by AYTM about Google+:

• Do you use Google+?
• Would you be more likely to use Google+ if you knew you would get more tailored search results?

To the first question (Do you use it?) 19.3 percent responded “yes,” and another 20.3 percent said they had accounts that were not really used. The other 60.4 percent said they did not have Google+ accounts or said that they didn’t know what it was.

In terms of whether more people would use Google+ if they knew it helped personalize their results, 7.5 percent said “yes” they would be more likely to use it. However 44.4 percent said “no” and 48.1 percent said “maybe.”

It’s important to point out that this is just one survey and it’s not clear how representative the survey population was of the entire US adult population. It’s also important to observe that people often react negatively to change. However these results, if they can be generalized, represent a pretty strong negative reaction to the new direction Google is headed.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: I wanted to add that with a further follow-up, it probably would have been incredibly easy to turn the 45% who said “No, I think everyone should see the same results” into a much smaller number.

For example, if the question had been: “When searching for football, do you think Americans and Europeans should see the exact same results?,” that probably would have given respondents reason to think further about the advantages to personalization.

Of course, the personalization in that case tend to be geographically-based (Americans would be more likely to see NFL information; Europeans about local soccer teams). But there are other examples where past history and social connections can help. That’s one reason why Bing, just like Google, uses both factors.

My experience has been that no one seems positive about any company wanting to personalize things for them when you ask. I always put the blame on this to Amazon, because of that one purchase you make that Amazon assumes means you are completely interested in that product forever going forward.

In addition, I don’t think people like the idea that any company could somehow “figure them out” and somehow assume it could personalize things for them.

But emotion aside, personalization can help (and can hurt), and it’s all about getting the balance right. I’d highly recommend anyone interested in more to read a post from Google last year about why it does personalization, as well as “The Filter Bubble” from Eli Pariser, which takes a critical look at personalization in general. Also see SMX East Keynote: A Conversation With Eli Pariser.

The topic of personalization will also be covered in-depth at our upcoming SMX West search marketing conference in San Jose Feb. 28-March 1, in these sessions:

• Getting Personal, Part 1: How Google & Bing Personalize With Social Connections
• Getting Personal, Part 2: How Google & Bing Personalize With Search History & Geography

The ability to block web sites from search results disappeared when Google’s new Search Plus personalized results format launched this week. Blocking was a feature added with great fanfare last year. Google says it will return, but the timing is uncertain.

How Blocking Worked

Previously, search results had a “Block All” link that appeared below them:

Selecting that option would cause all pages from the site you blocked to be dropped from your future search results. This option no longer appears.

Return Of Blocking Will Take “Some Time”

We noticed the feature had been dropped earlier this week. Google told us this was a bug, and that they are working on a fix:

We’re still in the process of rolling out Search plus Your World, and we’re also in the process of restoring the block sites feature for users experiencing difficulties.

That’s what we received on Tuesday, and it sounded fairly positive, a short-term problem. But on Thursday, Google Operating System was told:

The right people are looking at what needs to happen to re-enable this, but it might take some time.

Response To Relevancy Complaints

Google released the feature last March, following up on a feature released last February that previously let anyone block sites, but only if they used Google Chrome.

Both came about in the wake of criticisms that Google’s relevancy had decreased, criticisms so severe that Google addressed the issue last January on its official blog. The ability to block sites, along with Google’s Panda Update, were part of that response.

By the way, the Google cached pages link has NOT been removed. Some people have mistakenly thought this in the past few weeks. It was simply moved into the page preview area.

Related Stories:

• Blocking & Search Engine ResultsGoogle Lets You Block Any Site From Search Results
• Block Sites From Google Results Using Chrome’s “Personal Blocklist”
• Google Sets Sights On Content Farms In 2011
• Where Did Cached Pages Go On Google?
• Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”

Here is a list of services Google is closing in the near future or has already closed:

• Google Bookmarks Lists closing on December 19, 2011, which leaves searchers with no way to recoup their Google starred results.
• Google Friend Connect is shutting down March 1, 2012 and sending people to Google +.
• Google Gears will lose all support on December 1, 2011 but Chrome now has offline support.
• Google Search Timeline is currently not working anymore.
• Google Wave becomes read only on January 31, 2012 and on April 30, 2012 it goes offline.
• Google Knol will work until April 30, 2012 and then you have until October 1, 2012 to export your data off Knol.
• Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE

Related Stories:

• Google Shutters Fast Flip, Sidewiki, Aardvark, Subscribed Links & More Google Labs Projects
• Google Ends Google Video Uploads, Shutters Notebook, Catalog Search, Dodgeball & Jaiku
• Google Squared, News Timeline Get Added To Google’s Chopping Block
• Google Wave Crashes
• You Can Hate (Block) But No Longer Love (Star) Google’s Search Results
• Google Bookmarks Lists
• Google Gears Brings Offline Web Applications To Life
• Google’s Knol Launches: Like Wikipedia, With Moderation

Google’s Johannes Henkel said “starting today, you can now block sites on most Google domains.”

Here is a picture of blocking Matt Cutts blog in Google France:

As discussed before, there is a dashboard to manage sites that you block. So you can add new blocked sites, remove sites you blocked and so on.

Google did not specify which international Google properties this does not work on, but they did say it should work on “most Google domains.”

Finally, Google re-confirms that they are using this data as a ranking signal in their algorithm.

Related Stories:

• New: Google Lets You Block Any Site From Search Results
• New: Block Sites From Google Results Using Chrome’s “Personal Blocklist”
• Google SearchWiki Launches, Lets You Build Your Own Search Results Page
• Google SearchWiki 101: An Illustrated Guide
• Google SearchWiki To Get Off Button, Might Get Used As Ranking Signal
• Blekko Bans Content Farms From Its Index
• Demand Media & Being “The Best Click” On Google

Using Twitter, the fflick service analyzes and organizes comments about movies: overall, most recent, positive, what your friends have said and so on. This is a very interesting service and it’s easy to see why Google might want it.

Google developed recommendations service HotPot to help improve Local (after the failed attempt to acquire Yelp). And Google has been doing a kind of sentiment analysis of restaurant reviews on Place Pages for some time.

However fflick can be extended across domains and verticals potentially. It could work for products, news, restaurants, TV shows, any number of categories where there are data.

Stepping back one should probably see this acquisition supporting Google’s effort to develop “contextual discovery” or “search with searching.” My sense is that Google is gathering multiple data inputs as part of a distinct algorithm that it will increasingly use to recommend and alert primarily mobile users to venues, events and happenings of all kinds. Personal and social data are a core component of this experience.

While Bing and Blekko incorporate Facebook Likes from my network into search to make it more personal and social, Google is trying to do something equally social but with a different expression or user experience. I’m speculating, of course, about Google’s specific objectives. Regardless the fflick acquisition should definitely be seen in the larger context of Google’s move to incorporate a “social layer” into most of its products.

Postscript, January 26: A post on the YouTube blog confirms the acquisition: