Google plans to start placing links to more details on how they have customized a given set of search results for visitors, in the name of demonstrating why they chose those results.
Your ride on the Internet may not be getting spinners and glass tinting, but you will start to see some of the customizing on search in Google that happens with every query.
Google said on their official blog they plan to make the behind the scenes process a little more transparent. Searchers may start to see a message on the top right side of the results page, linking to additional details on how that search received some extra adjustments on the fly.
Such tweaks and twists may happen based on your location, as Google tries to find not just a relevant result, but a locally relevant one. Signing in to the Web History feature on Google guarantees the engine looks at that prior activity for the next search.
So far so good, but then Google makes you feel a little uncomfortable with another way of looking for options to customize the search results:
We take into account whether a particular query followed on the heels of another query. Because recent search activity provides such valuable context for understanding the meaning behind your searches, we use it to customize your results whenever possible, regardless of whether you’re signed in or signed out.
In order to customize your results and show you the customization details, we keep the most recent query on your browser for a limited time. After that, the information is removed from your browser and disappears immediately if you close your browser.
It’s a mild bit of persistence, and unfortunately it’s the place where Google chooses to be vague, as they don’t bother to define the length of “a limited time.” Closing the browser renders that moot, but for people at work who have an instance of IE or Firefox open for hours, this little detail merits a quantified answer that is better than what they offer now.
