Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Google

New Features in Google Offers “About This Site” Info

If you run a search in Google today, you’ll see that many of the hits on the search results page (SERP)  have a bit of gray text next to them with the name of the site. If click on that gray link, you can learn more about who is behind the website. Here, for example is what you see on the SERP for a search for martin luther king:

Google--about this site feature in search results pages\

While many of the hits include the “about this site” feature, some don’t, such as the one about Martin Luther King that is actually the work of white supremacists. In its blog post about this new feature, Google mentions that it will take time for it to seen on more items on the SERP:

You’ll see this extra information when a site is widely recognized as notable online, when there is enough information to show or when the content may be handy for you. (If you have feedback, please let us know here.) The information you’ll see is based on the Knowledge Graph, Google’s interconnected understanding of the things that exist in the world. As we expand the Knowledge Graph, we expect to give you more information about more websites – making it easier for you to choose the right result.

Despite the incomplete rollout of this feature, it’s worth knowing about and sharing with our students.

h/t Daniel Russell at SearchReSearch

Turning Off Google’s New Personal Search Setting

This week, Google made a huge change to the way search results are delivered. If you are logged into your Google account while searching (e.g., you’ve recently logged into Gmail or Google Calendar in your browser), then the search results you will see will be heavily populated by items that are connected to you in ways that Google is aware of. Google says that when you are signed in and run a search, you’ll see results that will include items from:

Google products: Search for publicly and privately shared content visible to you, like your Google+ (and Picasa) photos and Google+ posts from your friends.

Social Search: Discover relevant images and pages shared by people in your Google+ circles and by suggested connections.

Web History: Get customized results based on your past search activity on Google, such as searches you’ve done or results you’ve clicked. Learn more about Web History

Profiles in search: When you search for a friend’s name, you might see a link to the relevant Google+ profile in the list of autocomplete predictions. With personal results, you’re more likely to see your friend John’s profile than some John you’ve never met.

After Frank Donnelly shared with me this eye-opening post from Gizmodo about why some people might switch from Google to Bing as their default search engine, I decided to investigate how to turn off Google personal search (i.e., how to opt out).

Here are the steps to get to the settings options in Google when you are logged in:

In the upper right corner, look for the gears icon that gets you to the settings for your Google account:

Select “Search setttings”

On the search settings page that opens, scroll down to “Personal Results” to select “Do not use personal results.”