Google’s personalized results feature now “opt-out”
Do you know about Google’s personalized results feature? Basically, if you’re logged into your Google account and have the personalized results feature turned on, when performing a search on Google, the results will be “personalized” based on your previous searching behavior.
Previously, this feature was an “opt-in” feature where you had to manually go and set this feature up. Now, Google is turning it into an “opt-out” feature.
Why this is something to take note of?
- It influences your perception of search engine rankings. When this feature is on, actual search engine rankings become distorted due to your search history and previous search behavior.
- This being “opt-out” means, more than likely, more individuals will be using this feature (whether knowing about it or not). With Google serving personalized results, it’ll be even more important for your website to show up from the onset so that a user’s personalized results doesn’t shut your website out of their results just because they’ve clicked on your competitor’s websites.
It’ll be important to know whether this feature is turned on in your Google account settings so you can accurately depict unbiased search engine result pages.
Totally forgot about this feature…I enabled it when it came out and soon forgot about it.
Thanks for letting me know, I will most certainly be opting out (don’t hate me, Google!).
Hmmm… I didn’t know there is such feature… I will try it, thanks for sharing!
I saw this feature recently too. I type a query in Google’s search box, and after signing in my Google account, I type the same query, but the two results are different. I was wondering what was going on – thanks for the info.
This feature is really interesting. Both opt in and opt out features have advantages and disadvantages. The key point is to choose when to to opt out since personalizing will provide our preferred search criteria and opt out will provide an unbiased search. So it’s up to the user to decide.
I notice that if you opt-out and then later clear cookies, you’ll be opt’ed back in again!
Personalized results seem more like a glorified bookmarking mechanism than a useful search algorithm.
After reading your post, I type a query in Google’s search box, and after signing in my Google account, I type the same query, but the two results are different. Thanks for the information.
Thanks for the info, I didn’t know it was an opt-out feature. I’m not too crazy about it so I’ll be opting out!