Thursday, August 2, 2007

Add Better Pages to Your Google Results?
By Tony Ruscoe

Mike Grehan recently saw a new interface prototype being conducted by Google on the search results page. When searching Google UK for [digital cameras] he came across a PlusBox feature at the bottom of the page asking:

Know of a better page for digital cameras? Suggest one!

Expanding the PlusBox allowed Mike to enter a URL, explaining:

Next time, we’ll place it up top for you, with this marker: *

Mike says, “you get to input the URL of a favourite page on the query subject, click the button and, of course, you’re taken to your Google account to log in to your personalized search. Next time you search for digital cameras, your favourite page is up top with a little marker.”

If you find a good page in the search results at the moment – perhaps beyond the first page – you can obviously bookmark the result or search your Web History for it, but Google won’t prioritize this result in any way if you perform the search again, not even with Personalized Search switched on. With this new feature, which seems to be built using Google’s Web History and Bookmarks services, at least you can manually add your preferred sites for specific search phrases if you’re forgetful!

I wonder, if lots of people were to suggest the same “better page” for a specific search phrase, would Google then use that data to influence their standard search results? I guess that would only help to improve their search results if it wasn’t possible for blackhat SEO wizards or spammers to abuse the system though...

[Via SearchEngineLand. Image by Mike Grehan.]

Add Better Pages to Your ... by Tony Ruscoe | Comments (9)

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