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(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Mar 29th 2004 1:34pm





Now We Need To Create Another Google Profile?

from the too-much-in-the-open... dept

So, after creating "profiles" at various social networking sites - including Google's own Orkut - they expect us to all go in once again and happily create yet another profile so they can do personalized searches? Is it just me or is this the sort of thing that they should be working out on their own - or letting people designate a public profile that all these services can work off of? I'm also not convinced that such explicitly ranked personalized search is all that useful, either. I think search is personalized each time it's done based on what the user is looking for and the keywords they choose. What if one time I'm interested in looking at "bass" guitars, and the next time I want to read about "bass" fishing? I'm pretty likely to include the related keywords to make it clear. I don't know that I'd want to designate one as "more likely to be me". Instead, I'd prefer that Google look at my past searches (and perhaps a public profile) and take a guess - with a clear explanation. So, at the top, it could say "based on the info we know about you, we think you're looking for bass guitar info... if you're looking for bass fishing or Bass, the shoe company, click on these other links".

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    irrelevance?

    identicon
    Robert, Mar 29th, 2004 @ 2:30pm

    It took me 30 seconds or so to create the profile, and now when i search, and i don't like the first few results, I can move the slider and google can try and make the results a little better for me. what's so bad about that? they are adding slight amounts of value without adding negative side effects.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Poorly implemented feature

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    Greg, Mar 30th, 2004 @ 7:54am

    Their 'bass' example and your commentary on it makes me think that they have a poorly implemented feature here. Rather than ask the user to pre-classify themselves for the possibly many subtle contextual situations that arise, wouldn't it be simpler to be shown the, say, 3 or 4 contextual variations for a word when Google senses that there are multiple, distinct meanings? By examining the results separated by context I could more easily pick the right one. In other words, show me the results but separate them out from each other by context.

    This is all part of postulating a believable and enjoyable user scenario which doesn't seem to have been done for this feature.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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