Google has launched a beta version of its newly developed Personalised Search
service, allowing the search engine to tailor results to the user.
Google said that a fishing enthusiast, for example, would now get different
results than a musician when entering the word 'bass' as a search query.
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The service builds on the My Search History feature
launched as a beta in April. The service 'remembers' past searches, allowing
users to quickly retrieve a recently visited page.
Over time the collection of past searches allows Google to learn about a
user's interests and deploy that information to deliver better search results,
according to the company.
"This is a major step forward in the personalisation space, and Google
masterfully laid the groundwork with My Search History," Forrester Research
analyst Charlene Li
said on her
blog.
To further increase the relevancy of search results, Li suggested that Google
could in the future include RSS feeds to which users would subscribe, as well as
bookmarked sites to get an idea of their interests.
The search engine could also look at the time lapse between when a user
clicks on a search result and closes the page. This would allow the service to
assess whether a result has been successful by tracking the length of time that
a user spends on the page.
To deal with privacy concerns, Google requires users to sign in before they
can use the service. They can also delete past searches from the search engine's
memory or pause the recording feature.
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