Much has been said about Google Search plus Your World, a new feature which places a whole lot of Google+ in your search results. Twitter even made a public statement in which they expressed their concern over the new feature, saying that it was “bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”
Twitter gave a few examples of just why they’re so concerned, and in a comprehensive post, Search Engine Land points to all the ways that other social networks including Facebook and Twitter are losing out with the new system, primarily, with all of the top spots in your Google search results going to Google+ pages.
The new feature has now been included in the antitrust probe, but, depending on how you look at it, some users are still left with skewed search results.
Some engineers from Twitter, joined by their Facebook and MySpace peers have decided to do a little more than just speak out against the new feature. Heading over to the aptly named site, Focus on the User, by installing a bookmarklet, you suddenly have access to a whole range of new search results using Google’s own search engine. The bookmarklet comes with the rather loaded name, ‘Don’t be evil’.
Explaining a little bit about the tool, the homepage reads:
How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Google’s own relevance measure—the ranking of their organic search results—to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded.
All of the information in this demo comes from Google itself, and all of the ranking decisions are made by Google’s own algorithms. No other services or APIs are accessed.
To use the site, all you have to do is perform a search as you normally would on Google, and then hit the ‘Don’t be evil’ bookmarklet, and you’ll receive a whole new set of results.
Searching for The Next Web, for example, using Google’s search engine placed Google+ at the top of the results.
Hitting the Don’t be Evil button popped Google+ down to third spot, with Twitter making its way up the results ladder.
To find out more about the project, check out the FAQs and to see Focus on the User in action, check out the video below:
Do Facebook and Twitter want a last dinner as well?
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LikeWhat if Facebook were to reveal a real, search engine? With more than 1 billion users in a while, it will be a nightmare for Google http://www.maindevice.com/2012/01/13/a-facebook-search-engine-the-ultimate-threat-and-nightmare-for-google/
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LikeI don't understand the 'outrage'. It's a well known concept that if a curator creates their own content they will push it to the forefront. The fact that they do push their own content above relevant results will always come under fire (I'm not saying it's right) but it's old news. But why is this happening with Google+ right now? Simple - it's personal content over relevancy. It's ME (Google+) over THEM (Other Social Networks). But the big issue is that Google's Search Engine founds its footing with relevancy and right now they're destroying that reputation with personal advertising for their own product - or more on point, less relevant search results. If your company is going to eat it's own product (in this case "relevant search"), make sure you're replacing it with something better...or don't be evil.
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LikeIts Facebook who signed an exclusive deal with Bing. Its Twitter who rejected Google's deal to have their content indexed.
Now because of Google's aggressive ( yeh, little bit ) Google+ integration in all services they are crying like a moron.
Period.
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LikePsychotic Overdose Let me rephrase that for you. Its Bing who signed an exclusive deal with Facebook AND Twitter. It is Google who signed an exclusive deal with Twitter (but chose not to with Facebook.) It is Google who stopped Twitter integration (AND never wanted a Facebook one) then included Google+ in search results.
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LikeHaha, total Google pwnage!
Very well proved.
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LikeThis is a clear smoking gun, proving that Google is favoring its own services in its search results.
You can claim that they're entitled to do this, although antitrust investigators might disagree, but the point is that since they've denied doing this, they've been caught in a lie.
If Google didn't think what they were doing was wrong, why would they lie about it?
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LikeJust watching these fools fret about Google being anti-competitive is hilarious. I don't even know where to begin. Should I start with the fact that Facebook signed an exclusive deal with Bing? Or that Twitter rejected Google's deal to have their content indexed? Or how about the fact that *gasp* you are not forced to use Google? And please don't bring up that retarded Microsoft-Internet Explorer comparison, that was a different story. If people wanted cheap computers, they got Windows PCs, and installing Linux was a pain. In Google's case, changing to a different search engine is literally "one click away."
"Spare the rod and spoil the child." For years Google has offered its users free services which they are in no way forced to use, and it gets villainized the moment it tries to monetize its investments. Kinda tells you something about human nature, what with some other company, like Apple, which employs similar tactics but gets no heat for it, because, well, it's Apple, and we've all come to expect that from Apple, right? *rolleyes*
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LikeYay, let's report on weird third-party scripts that make google load twice as long.
C'mon TNW, even though it's obvious you dislike G+, please be more professional.
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LikeTomasz Wykwintny I don't think that's a very fair characterization. I've personally written several times about why I think Google+ is a great service which isn't going away anytime soon. Case in point: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/08/07/why-google-is-very-much-here-to-stay/
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LikeThis is excellent! Good job on this!
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LikeConversation from Facebook
Wonderful pictures!
This will further blend all the information together that we receive from the Internet. Although, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
I can tell
does google knows this?