Google Knows Where You Live
Still at Google--the company's personaization guru, Sep Kamvar, is telling us about new refinements to how the company uses what it knows about you to give more relevant results with less work on your part.
He's mentioned Google Web History, last week's update to Search History that remembers not just what you've Googled for, but everything you've looked at on the Web.
Now he's pointing out that it's tough for a search engine to know what you want when you search for something that could refer to multiple things--like, for instance, a beach name that could be one of several beaches in different places that have the same name.
If you've set your home as your default location in Google Maps, he's saying, Google knows where you are--and that can help it figure out what you want when you Google for something with geographical implications.
So, he's announcing, Google will now use your default location in Google Maps (if you have one) to push stuff located near you up to the top of search results in the main Google search engine.
Cool idea...it'll be fun to see how much it helps with search relevance. (I just did a query for "mazda dealer," wondering if Google would automatically focus in on ones here in the Bay Area. It didn't. But I'm not sure if Google's saying the engine is smart enough to do that yet, and I'm not sure the new feature is up and running...)
Last minute update: Google says the stuff they're showing us today will go live at midnight tonight. I'll try my search again then.
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Doesn't this worry you from a privacy perspective? I mean, I use Anonymizer's Anonymous Surfing software, so it's not a huge worry to me, but what about the general public? Don't you see this as a potential negative?
Google is not the 'friendly' company this article potrays. Google censored Chinese websites as well as banned the book "America Deceived" from Google Books. Google will abuse the privacy of individuals as they have in the past.
Final link (after Google Books caved to pressure and dropped the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0