New Google Search Features are Awesome!
If you have a Gmail/Google account you MUST go login now. Then open another window and do a normal Google search. See anything different in the result listing?
There are a couple of new icons along each search result that allow YOU to vote/score/rank results higher/lower, remove results that you’ll never care about or need, and to comment on results. You can also add a link that you always want to appear for the phrase you searched for. Want “cats.com” to come up as your second result when you search for dogs? You can make it happen now!
AWESOME!
I have thought for a long time how great it would be to simply remove a result listing you know you’ll never need, but they go even further. These features make it easy to find repetitive information very quickly and to tailor it to your needs.
You also know Google’s taking all that feedback and making their system even smarter. If a thousand people hide a result, or a thousand people promote a result to a higher rank, that will have an effect on future searches for everyone. It’s ingenious!
While the commenting feature is very much like the old “Note This” feature which was bulky and mostly unusable, the commenting feature is super easy and intuitive. I WISH they kept the “Note This” feature, however, for personal use so you can maintain individual notes on a website that don’t become public.
Anyway, I felt the need to let more people know about it because it’s slick. And of course Google integrate these new features in an unobtrusive way — they’re known for that.
Kudos to Google!