I've observed this a lot when working on SEO for my webpage. I'll be like, "Cool, I'm the top result for my name!" And, yes, this will be true for people searching from Berkeley, where I live. But if I go to an IP address over in SF, I'm not even on the front page.
Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
61–70 of 171 posts
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#62Welcome 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-...
There's a difference between Signed out, and Incognito (no cookies)! + People generally tend to miss the point that Incognito doesn't prevent sharing the IP of the user. + I think DuckDuckGo's study missed out using VPN in their analysis. i.e., SignedIn vs Incognito vs (Incognito+VPN)
> 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.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#63I remember Paul Graham gave a keynote at one of the Pycons some years ago. It was about interesting ideas that you might want to work on in the future. One idea was to build a search engine that returns unpersonalized results. He talked about how Google will be moving into a "it's true, if it's true for you" kind of world. His idea was that it will open new opportunities. I think DuckDuckGo is one example, and they'v…
While I have switched to DuckDuckGo a long time ago, there basically is no proof they're actually not doing exactly what Google does.
The funny thing is that what DuckDuckGo is doing is actually working... By limiting ads to the search words they manage to provide relevant ads (insofar any ads are ever relevant). It turns out that when I search for "office chair" I'm actually not shopping for the Macbook Pro I was looking at a month ago... :O
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#64The 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…
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 more precise results with the various search operators?
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#65Earlier 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…
I'm aware of quotes, but I have two issues:
1. It's tiring to type quotes around every word every time.
2. It takes you to the other extreme. Just because I'm being more precise than Google thinks I am doesn't mean if I have 8 words in my query that all of them are mandatory. There is potential for a useful middle ground that quotes don't get me to.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#66I remember Paul Graham gave a keynote at one of the Pycons some years ago. It was about interesting ideas that you might want to work on in the future. One idea was to build a search engine that returns unpersonalized results. He talked about how Google will be moving into a "it's true, if it's true for you" kind of world. His idea was that it will open new opportunities. I think DuckDuckGo is one example, and they'v…
While I have switched to DuckDuckGo a long time ago, there basically is no proof they're actually not doing exactly what Google does.
Do you mean personalizing search results? IF so, that's incredibly easy to check: run the same searches on computers in separate physical locations and compare results.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between Signed out, and Incognito (no cookies)! + People generally tend to miss the point that Incognito doesn't prevent sharing the IP of the user. + I think DuckDuckGo's study missed out using VPN in their analysis. i.e., SignedIn vs Incognito vs (Incognito+VPN)
> 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 session has ended, the result personalization didn't need anything saved in the browser to recognize who you are.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between Signed out, and Incognito (no cookies)! + People generally tend to miss the point that Incognito doesn't prevent sharing the IP of the user. + I think DuckDuckGo's study missed out using VPN in their analysis. i.e., SignedIn vs Incognito vs (Incognito+VPN)
> 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 will accept new cookies but to my understanding it won't serve existing cookies that pre-date the Incognito session. A fresh Incognito window is supposed to be like you cleared your history and cookies before opening it, and then cleared them again when you close it. But yeah, in between the browser acts as normal.
In a normal (not Incognito) browser window, you don't have to be logged into Google for Google to read Google cookies. Logging out doesn't make you anonymous; they still know who you are.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> wanting laws to make them stop... It just feels silly and pointless. > The solution (imho) has to come from browser software or w3c. Generally in society when there is a natural motive for one party to wrong another, we use law to mitigate it. Technical solutions make sense, as there are always bad actors; people still lock their doors to deter burglars. But we don't expect to need to wear a suit of armour outside…
I'm not saying wrongdoing is fair game (obviously) or that laws are pointless. They just don't work for everything. Laws' side effects can be as important as the straightforward intention. For example, the gdpr reporting requirements for data leaks is a good idea. It's nice that people can know data about them has leaked, but the bigger reason is the side effect... the transparency will improve security. The side eff…
> They make newspapers compliant [...]
That's debatable. Almost nothing actually meets the GDPR's requirements for freely given consent (that non-technically required consent can't be tied to / traded for the service, and is opt in; no pre-ticked boxes.)
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#70My search results have been personalized for years without being logged in. I didn't realize this was surprising.