Developers and engineers from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have been working on a solution to the “Google+ problem”. The solution they have developed is in response to the new Search Plus Your World changes that have been rolled out on Google, which were felt to unfairly promote Google+ pages instead of more active social profiles.
The result of this work can be found at focusontheuser.org. From there, users are encouraged to click and drag a button to their bookmarks bar, and this button can then be used to alter search results. Or, as the team call say “try a more relevant Google”. It works by using Google’s own relevance measure to determine which social content should appear in the People and Pages section of search results. So the social results better match the most relevant and popular social locations for search terms. It doesn’t exclude Google+, but it does categorise it more accurately according to how relevant it is.
The name of this bookmarklet?
If this phrase sounds familiar, that’s because “don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto of Google themselves, and an ironic reminder to the company that perhaps they’ve slipped from that ethos with their promotion of Google+ above all other social networks.
It’s an interesting project, and it could become very popular. Search engine users value relevancy over anything else, and if they’re given the tool to get it, why wouldn’t they use it?
Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow.