Google Adds Visited Pages, Past Hour & Fewer Shopping Sites Filtering

Oct 1, 2009 at 12:01pm ET by Danny Sullivan

You like it! You really like it! It being the Google Search Options feature that Google added to its search pages back in May, the company says. So as a reward, Google is adding options to filter out (or highlight) pages you've visited before, pages that Google's found in the past hour and a toggle to show more or fewer "commercial" listings in its results. My companion piece, Up Close With Google Search Options, does exactly as the headline says. It will take you through ALL the Search Options that Google's offers in great depth, including the new ones. But for those who just want [...]

Filed in: Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers, Google: User Interface, Google: Web History & Search History, Google: Web Search, Search Features: Dates, Search Features: Query Refinement, Top News

Up Close With Google Search Options

Oct 1, 2009 at 12:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Now that Google Search Options has added new features, I thought it was a good time to revisit how everything works -- and in some cases, doesn't work. Let's get up close and personal with all the filtering options! By the way, this is a long article. If you want a digest of what's new today, then see the much shorter companion piece, Google Adds Visited Pages, Past Hour & Fewer Shopping Sites Filtering. Using Search Options The Search Options panel is available after you do a search. Look near the top left-hand side of the search page, just below the search box, and you'll see [...]

Filed in: Features: General, Google: User Interface, Google: Web History & Search History, Google: Web Search, Search Features: Commands, Search Features: Dates, Search Features: Query Refinement, Top News

Report: Most People Don’t Want Online Tracking Even If It Means Relevant Ads Or Savings

Sep 30, 2009 at 8:10am ET by Greg Sterling

Get ready marketers: a credible new report with sweeping implications from the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley is likely to be the nail in the coffin of self regulation of online advertising. Specifically I'm talking about behavioral targeting, which largely concerns online display advertising but does marginally touch search at Yahoo and Google. The NY Times discussed the report, released today: The study’s authors hired a survey company to conduct interviews with 1,000 adult Internet users. The interview, which lasted about 20 minutes, included questions like “Please tell [...]

Filed in: Google: Legal, Google: Web History & Search History, Legal: General, Legal: Privacy, Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting, Yahoo: Legal

Google’s Search Suggestions Change On Second Search

Aug 10, 2009 at 9:29am ET by Barry Schwartz

I am not sure if this is new, but when you look at the first search suggestions given to you by Google and then look at the second set of search suggestions, Google will change them, assuming you were not happy with the first set of results. Google Operating System just pointed this out and I have never seen it mentioned prior (doesn't mean it hasn't been mentioned prior). Here is an example of this in action: (1) Search suggestions by Google for the word [search]: (2) Then I land on the search results page and try it again, and notice that the suggestions are different: [...]

Filed in: Google: Search Customization, Google: Web History & Search History, Google: Web Search

What Happened To Google’s ‘Commitment To Transparency’?

Jul 16, 2009 at 2:44am ET by Matt McGee

It's no secret that Google -- and other search engines -- uses a variety of factors to customize search results: your search history, your location, and so forth. If you misspell a word, search engines often guess what you intended to type and show auto-corrected results. But on Google's search results pages, it's becoming a secret when these changes are happening. Google Blogoscoped writes about Google ignoring some search terms altogether (as if it knows better than you what you meant to search for). The example in that post is a search for "dictionary cleaning up suddenly," in which Goo [...]

Filed in: Google: Search Customization, Google: User Interface, Google: Web History & Search History, Google: Web Search, Top News

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