Digg-style experiment underway

Nov 29, 2007 08:42 GMT  ·  By

A couple of days ago, I told you that you could enlist for a number of experiments that Google is running through its Experimental division and, at that moment, I had you concentrating on the auto-complete options that would offer you possible search queries, based on what you had typed that far.

Another option is currently in work with Google Experimental, which now aims at letting users influence their search experience by adding, moving and removing search results. And if eventually the same user searches again using the same keywords, he will be able to see that the changes will still be there, if not reverted of his own free accord and by himself.

You can see on the left every option available with this experiment, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a way to be joining it and provide further personal input. It looks like Google is picking users at random in order to help with this, but the page that talks about it says that it won't be long in the testing stage. Whatever that means?

Your options are actually 3: first, you have the arrow that will move the result to the top of the page and place an orange flower or star-shaped marker (depends on what you see) next to it (1a). That's the result that will be there the next time you search for it. The second option you have is the X (that marks the spot) that will remove the result and will hide it the next time you go through with the same search (1b).

The third option is to submit the address to a page that you think is relevant to your search (1c). The orange marker will be there next to that link the next time you conduct the search.

In order to be able to see all these changes, you have got to be signed in both the first and the second time you are using the features, but with the "remember password" option that is broadly being used at the moment there shouldn't be a problem with that.