Search Success

Posted on April 29, 2008

In an effort to make the searches you do on the web even more accurate in the results they deliver, Google will start to personalize search results based on the previous query. So, if you were to search for [car] and then [red] after that, BOTH the ads and the organic results will be altered to take the previous query into account. To some degree, it will be as if the second query was for [red car].” According to some, Google will use not just the previous query, but a list of recent queries.

Until now, Google has only personalized the results based on the search history for users that were logged in and enabled the Web History service. Google then created a profile from the history of your searches and used it to tie your queries together and slightly alter the rankings for pages that were likely to match your interests.

This new method for personalizing results (recent searches) should work without having to log in and could influence the results in a different way. In many cases, people constantly refine their queries by adding or removing keywords, but Google and other search engines don’t use all these refinements to improve the results in real time. By connecting the related searches from a session, Google will understand more from what you intend to find and should deliver better results.

While search history zones in on the intent of general queries, the list of recent searches connects all the failed attempts to find an answer for an involved query and creates a more detailed description of what you actually intend. Search history could be described as Google’s long-term memory and the recent queries could be the working or short-term memory.

Now, maybe I can find what I’m looking for, instead of the inevitable noise of a thousand useless search results.