While it is no surprise at all at all that the Internet has both facilitated instant global communication and increased insularity with the diversification of news sources, I don't think I realized to quite what extent my online habits shaped the information which I received. The benefit of getting what you want is obvious; the downsides to being given _only_ what you want are more insidious. Out of curiosity, I did a search for what some of the algorithmic "signals" that Pariser talks about that Google might use to alter search results; below is a list generated by a random German blogger dude that doesn't contain any real surprises, I suppose, but it made me wonder if there is a market for a purposeful search engine scrambler that will always throw in a few 'wild cards' into your search results to make sure that you are getting more of the whole picture. My understanding was that the filter was designed to try and take you to the most _relevant_ page (i.e. if you type in Britney Spears, the number one search result should be the official Britney Spears website, not a creepy stalker's website that just consists of the name 'Britney Spears' repeated five thousand times), but if that were the case, then _anyone_ typing in "Egypt" (as in Pariser's talk) should get as their first hit a Wikipedia type article with a general run down on Egyptian history and current events, not ads for travel companies, right? If any of the Googlers in my life want to weigh in, I'd be very interested to hear what they have to say.
Oh, and my baby has a TOOTH!!! so exciting.
Proposed possible filter modifiers:
- our search history
- our location
- the browser we use
- the browser's version
- the computer we use
- the language we use
- the time we need to type in a query
- the time we spend on the search result page
- the time between selecting different results for the same query
- our operating system
- our operating system's version
- the resolution of our computer screen
- average amount of search requests per day
- average amount of search requests per topic (to finish search)
- distribution of search services we use (web / images / videos / real time / news / mobile)
- average position of search results we click on
- time of the day
- current date
- topics of ads we click on
- frequency we click advertising
- topics of adsense advertising we click while surfing other websites
- frequency we click on adsense advertising on other websites
- frequency of searches of domains on Google
- use of google.com or google toolbar
- our age
- our sex
- use of “i feel lucky button”
- do we use the enter key or mouse to send a search request
- do we use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through search results
- do we use advanced search commands (how often)
- do we use igoogle (which widgets / topics)
- where on the screen do we click besides the search results (how often)
- where do we move the mouse and mark text in the search results
- amount of typos while searching
- how often do we use related search queries
- how often do we use autosuggestion
- how often do we use spell correction
- distribution of short / general queries vs. specific / long tail queries
- which other google services do we use (gmail / youtube/ maps / picasa /….)
- how often do we search for ourself
