News: Google makes search more personal

Google has announced moves to make its search functionality more personal. On its official blog, the company explained that search has typically been limited to a “universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met.”

However, the company pointed out that while delivering the “best results” from the web was its main aim, optimum results from a search may come from personal content or information shared with those one cares about.

To this end, the Google’s search engine is currently undergoing a transformation, which is intended to ultimately enable it to understand people and their relationships as well as content.

New features introduced

The three new features introduced this week include Personal Results, which should assist to find information contained within Google+ photographs and posts that have been shared with one.

Another feature, Profiles in Search, is aimed at helping users to “immediately find people they’re close to or might be interested in following; while People and Pages, caters to finding people profiles and Google+ pages in a specific topic or area of interest, who can subsequently be followed.

Google summed up that together, these features combine to create Search plus Your World. “Search is simply better with your world in it, and we’re just getting started,” the company added.

Twitter lashes out

Already there is one major ‘internet celebrity’ feeling threatened: micro-blogging service Twitter, which has come out in opposition against the move.

According to Mashable, Twitter released a statement asserting that its real-time information was often the most relevant result on Google. “As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter,” the company said. “We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone.”

The company went on to assert that the move was “bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.” Although we suspect what they really meant was that the move was bad for Twitter.

In turn, Google lashed out on its Google+ page, responding that “we are a bit surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.”

To the point

One Google+ user, Alex Dillum rather humorously responded to Google’s Google+ post, writing “What am I writing on right now ? A Facebook wall ? A list of Tweets ? What's happening?”

We suspect that level of confusion is the norm rather than the exception for many digital savvy natives, whose main challenge moving forward may well be remembering where they wrote what and which service they used.

Google makes search more personal

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