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About Google Co-op
About Google Co-op
What can Google Co-op do for me?
Google Co-op currently offers three ways to customize your web search experience. The most important of these for Google users is how it can deliver specialized search results through subscribed links.
The other features are creating a custom search engine and refining search results with topics.
Subscribed Links - Who do you trust?
You may have come across sites with buttons like this:
If you visit site XYZ and click on this button, what happens?
Actually, not much unless you have some sort of Google account, be it Gmail, Groups, Adwords, AdSense, and so on and so forth. If you don't already have an account, you can easily go through the sign-up process.
So, once you have your account, by clicking on this button you are confirming that you are willing to let site XYZ put its pages in the number 1 position in your search results page if site XYZ thinks it has something relevant to what you're searching on.
Hang On! Did you say No 1 Position?
Yes, the No 1 Position in your search results - except that the link will be marked as a "Subscribed Link" and it only appears when you are logged in to your Google account.
If after a while you don't like the results that site XYZ is offering, you can easily unsubscribe through your Google account Co-op area. Just go to My subscriptions and click the unsubscribe button for the sites that have fallen out of favor.
The results might look something like this:
Is this a Good Thing?
Yes and no. If you only ever see results from sites that you like, you might end up with a biased view of the world. Without subscribed links, what you get to see is Google's view of the world. Neither is perfect, but it's always nice to have the option.
Be the judge yourself. Try it, and if you don't like it, just turn it off.
Tell me more!
How does site XYZ decide what results to show me?
The owners of site XYZ must create a list of the types of search queries that are relevant to their site, which URLs are relevant to each type of query, and descriptions of those URLs. When you type in a query into Google, it searches for a matching query in the list that site XYZ provided. If Google finds a matching query, it takes the description provided and displays it in the Subscribed Links zone.
Can it be abused?
Not effectively. If site XYZ chooses to put up irrelevant URLs, users will soon unsubscribe. The system only works if the quality of information that the site is providing is good.
Why would site XYZ participate in this?
Mainly in the hope of getting repeat visits from searchers.
Why would Google do this?
Excellent question. The reasons that Google will probably give are "to provide a better web search experience", or "as a service to its users"... most likely, the true reasons run deeper.
This is speculation, but let's think it through. Google was built on the best ranking system of its time, known as PageRank, which ranked search results based on the number of votes (links) from other websites. In its advent, links from other websites were largely independent recommendations; over time, though, this has been manipulated at various levels so that some sites are able to get more high rankings than they perhaps deserve. The trouble with the PageRank approach is that the webmasters themselves have some control over the voting system.
A system less prone to manipulation is one where Internet users (and not necessarily webmasters) get to have their vote. A vote might be a click-through from search results (Google currently samples a percentage of click-throughs), or the actual visitor traffic on a site (which Google can acquire through sites that use Google Analytics), or actual choices that people make to say "I trust this site" (enter Google Co-op and Subscribed Links).
So the theory is that these are all ways in which Google can measure the real worth of a site in a way that is less prone to manipulation, and ultimately use that information to provide a better web search experience for all. Perhaps.