A team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are fighting back against Google’s new “Search Your World” which puts relevant results from a user’s Google + account and their Google + circles up top. The tool is called “Don’t Do Evil” and the tool itself is available on their website.
What the tool does, according to the FAQ, “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.”
Many people who do not stay on top of the ever changing Internet Topics may have been confused as to the possible impact of “Search Your World.
Here’s an explanation from the Focus on the User’s website:
“When you search for “cooking” today, Google decides that renowned chef Jamie Oliver is a relevant social result. That makes sense. But rather than linking to Jamie’s Twitter profile, which is updated daily, Google links to his Google+ profile, which was last updated nearly two months ago. Is Google’s relevance algorithm simply misguided?
No. If you search Google for Jamie Oliver directly, his Twitter profile is the first social result that appears. His abandoned Google+ profile doesn’t even appear on the first page of results. When Google’s engineers are allowed to focus purely on relevancy, they get it right.”
The tool is only available for Chrome, Firefox or Safari and not Internet Explorer. Will you use the new tool?
