San Francisco — Global search engine leader Google gambled attracting the wrath of privacy advocates last weekend as it now proposes to deliver customized search results available to all of its users, whether they are signed into a Google account — should be a wake-up call to those concerned about what the company knows about them and how it is used.
For many of its search fans, Google has now began offering Web search results that are customized based on their previous search history and clicks. For example, if someone consistently visits a particular sports site, Google, using a cookie placed on users’ machines to track their search behavior and when they again look up sports topics in its search engine.
But there has always been one drawback: people had to be signed in to a Google account to see such customization.
Personalized Search results were previously served only to users who were signed into their Google account, and only when they had agreed to let Google track their Web History, or log of search queries and results. “What we are doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can deliver it to signed-out users as well. This addition enables us to customize search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser,” wrote Google’s Bryan Horling, Software Engineer and Matthew Kulick, Product Manager.
The change was announced late Friday on Google’s Official Blog.
“For example, since I always search for [recipes] and often click on results from epicurious.com, Google might rank epicurious.com higher on the results page the next time I look for recipes. Other times, when I’m looking for news about Cornell University’s sports teams, I search for [big red]. Because I frequently click on www.cornellbigred.com, Google might show me this result first, instead of the Big Red soda company or others,” the two wrote.
Moving forward, on Friday Google said it was extending these personalized search results to users even if they are signed in or not. By escaping the privacy proportion in Web search, Google is setting itself up for some loud barking by privacy watchdogs who already feel Google takes too many liberties with users’ info.
A “view customizations” link will be visible on the top right of the search results page, and offers an explanation of how the results have been tailored and how the feature can be turned off.
“Our goal is to provide relevant search results,” said Nathan Tyler, a Google spokesman. “The benefits that we have seen for signed-in users were so great we want to extend those same benefits to everyone.”
Apart from improved search results, the technology can also provide more targeted advertising, However, Google may already have been exercising this, just not offering the benefit of better search recommendations to users.
But the change is already angering privacy advocates, who say that using Google while not logging in was one way to minimize exposure to its data-collection practices.
“The most important point is that Google is now tracking users of search who have specifically chosen not to log in to a Google account,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “They are blotting out one of the few remaining privacy safeguards for Google services.”
In an assessment of the announcement on the blog Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan noted that there was no way for searchers or others to view the saved search records on Google, and that Google was giving people the opportunity to permanently opt out of the arrangement.
“All the major search engines have long recorded what you search on. Google is simply using it to refine your results,” Sullivan wrote.
Google explains how this all works in this short video.
For example, Google explained how the query “SOX” might signal one type of search intent coming from baseball fans in Boston or Chicago, and another type of intent from an accountant closing the books on the quarter. Based on that particular person’s search profile, Google can promote links to baseball scores or Sarbanes-Oxley details higher in search results than other links affiliated with those queries.
Nevertheless, with each minute step, Google is tempting fate with agencies such as the Department of Justice, which is increasingly scrutinizing the company’s behavior regarding its search and other Web services, such as the Google Book Search deal.