go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

Um, Google’s “Search, Plus Your World” Sucks So Far

Google’s “Search, Plus Your World” launched with some fanfare and with jilted partner, Twitter, crying foul.  But the real proof is in the “pudding” and so far, from my own taste testing, the “puddin’s not all that good.” In fact, it’s downright spoiled.

In theory, returning results based on my own activities, photos, shares, etc. plus the social sharing activities of my circles of friends seems to make sense. After all, my friends should share similar interests, etc. However, in reality, this appears to be far from the truth.

Either my friends all suck at what they are sharing OR what I search for has very little to do with (or very little overlap with) what I and my friends are sharing. And I think the latter is more likely the case, because my friends are all awesome and I usually find what they share to be super informative and I always learn something new from them and the insightful curation they do.

So what is wrong with Google’s new personalized search, flavored with +1? And will it ever get better with time and more usage?

My current hypothesis is NO .. it won’t get better with time.  Here are a few reasons why I think so:

- what I search for (what I need at this moment) is not necessarily what I share (what I think my followers would be interested in)

- news items and other cool information that is shared are things I “discover” through the curation of my circles of friends and I like to browse these things to learn; this contrasts with things that I search for at any moment in time, which could include things that I need now, gifts for other people, research for clients in other industries that I am not in. What this means is that those search terms and the sites that I visit don’t necessarily have any bearing on any future searches and what I am interested in.

- finally, among all my friends, I would probably only ask 1 or 2 of them for restaurant recommendations (in New York) because they live here and are known for their expertise in food; I would ask different friends for advice on digital cameras (@designerguy), keyword research platforms (@glenngabe), ad networks (@jonathanmendez), etc. you get the idea. So canvassing my entire social graph for keyword based ways to personalize search results is actually making the results worse (see examples below).

Search ( photos )

[Redacted] – I don’t need to see my own photos from my own Picasa, which I already know is there.

Search  ( italian restaurants in New York  - no quotes )

Search ( spend polarization – no quotes )

Tags: Advice, bearing, better with time, case, circles of friends, contrasts, cool, curation, designerguy, expertise, fact, fanfare, Far, followers, food, glenngabe, Good, google, graph, hypothesis, idea, information, insightful, italian, jonathanmendez, Keyword, latter, moment, moment in time, need, news, news items, partner, photos, Picasa, Plus, polarization, proof, proof is in the pudding, puddin, pudding, reality, Redacted, research, restaurant, restaurant recommendations, search, Search Plus Your World, search terms, sense, sharing, something, SPYW, suck, Sucks, taste, TESTING, theory, time, truth, twitter, usage, what this means, World