we have known this and they state it publicly... who funded this?
Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
81–90 of 171 posts
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#82I think I agree with the complaints about this study. Unique doesn't mean personalized. IP geo-location, ISP... Don't forget browser and OS versions... there are lots of things you can sample over without actually representing any info leak from your logged in session. Someone searching "at the same time" could technically be different times (remember time zones!) for the purposes of the algorithm (is the search duri…
containers
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's a difference between Signed out, and Incognito (no cookies)! Is there? I was under the impression that Incognito and its cousins generally still accept and preserve cookies for the duration of the temporary session. This means that for this purpose, there isn't really a difference.
Incognito is supposed to give you a completely clean session that doesn't carry over the cache, cookies, etc. from your normal browsing context. In this study, my understanding is that result personalization carried over from a normal browsing session into the clean, Incognito session, likely due to IP correlation or possibly through User-Agent strings. So while Incognito has its own context that is wiped once the se…
Hmmm I wonder if using a second browser, maybe based on a different renderer, in incognito with a different user-agent set up would be enough or if it would still get enough info. At that point it would still have your outgoing ip address at least is there anything else they could still match to a signed in session? I guess you could also route all traffic in the unsigned in session through a VPN too.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#84The problem is, these "personalized results" have become mostly useless. For more technical (or simply specific) queries, Google seems to vomit useless only vaguely related links instead of, you know, pages that cover what i searched for. This does more to encourage me switching to some other search engine than any privacy concern.
That's a separate issue, but a real one. Practically speaking, many non-technical users _do_ want to formulate their query in an imprecise, sloppy manner and have the search engine figure it out. Programmers are capable of and accustomed to putting a lot of care and precision into exactly how they communicate (especially when communicating with a computer), but regular people don't usually do that. They may not even…
Likewise matching DCP-L2550DW to pages with DCP-L2550BW or something similar. It is so obviously specific a no results answer is better than a misleading one.
I think this is due to people more often than not finding the top page useful regardless which just reinforces the link.
But it's super annoying to find you've just waited for a 300mb download of the wrong driver.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#85The problem is, these "personalized results" have become mostly useless. For more technical (or simply specific) queries, Google seems to vomit useless only vaguely related links instead of, you know, pages that cover what i searched for. This does more to encourage me switching to some other search engine than any privacy concern.
That's a separate issue, but a real one. Practically speaking, many non-technical users _do_ want to formulate their query in an imprecise, sloppy manner and have the search engine figure it out. Programmers are capable of and accustomed to putting a lot of care and precision into exactly how they communicate (especially when communicating with a computer), but regular people don't usually do that. They may not even…
The only solution I can see is for a search engine to support both styles of communication.
It would be great if Google had some kind of, let’s call it “Code Search” feature that searched all open source repositories.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a separate issue, but a real one. Practically speaking, many non-technical users _do_ want to formulate their query in an imprecise, sloppy manner and have the search engine figure it out. Programmers are capable of and accustomed to putting a lot of care and precision into exactly how they communicate (especially when communicating with a computer), but regular people don't usually do that. They may not even…
If you put the word "margins" in quotes in your query, all of your results will contain that word. Similarly, you can force words not to appear by prefixing them with a "-". > The only solution I can see is for a search engine to support both styles of communication. Isn't this exactly what you're asking for? Non-technical users can be imprecise and let Google figure it out, while technical or power users can get mor…
That used to be the case, and it was fine, but they started breaking those operators a few years back (maybe when they tried to make “+” search for Google+ pages, but I’m not sure).
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#87Here’s Google’s search liaison clarifying things 2 hours ago on Twitter. Localization shouldn’t be confused with personalization. Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not in search
https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1070027261376491520...
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#88Welcome to 2009, I guess "Today we're helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide (...)" https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-...
I don't think this DuckDuckGo being sloppy, just The Verge. The real headline here is that the effect extends to Incognito mode.
In the 2009 post, Google said:
> ...customize search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser... You'll know when we customize results because a "View customizations" link will appear... Clicking the link will let you... turn off this type of customization
None of that appears to be match the study results here. Incognito mode isn't supposed to pick up session cookies from normal browsing, no customization notice appears, and an option to turn the behavior off certainly isn't provided.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#89Localization != personalization.
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Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#90Beeing hooked on rust the programming language and rust the game at the same time has been interesting google-wise. I used to take it granted to get rust programming results. And now google seems really confused. And I'm not getting good results for either. "Personalized search matters". And also. Fuck privacy invasion.