The Changing Face of Search – Google Gets Personal with “Search Plus Your World”

Google’s constantly changing its algorithms to keep us on our toes. But the latest change to its search results is probably the most drastic yet.

“Search Plus Your World” will find content that has been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings, according to a recent post that appeared on Searchengineland.com.

At the moment it will only happen for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English. For some it will make life a lot easier; however for others, it raises concerns about privacy. Although the private content remains just that, private, it may make the content more visible to friends and family.

Of course, Google’s search has been personalised for some time now, in fact since 2005, and has evolved constantly since then:

What will the new search method mean?

Your new personalised results will include:

• Listings from the web (general)
• Listings from the web (in relation to your personal behaviour)
• Listings from the web (in relation to your social connections)
• Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos
• Private or limited Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you

You search results will show you the number of personal results and the number of other results. Plus, a new button will appear on the right of your results that will enable you to toggle between your personalised and non-personalised results.

For more information about these changes, take a look at the full article and find out why Google’s results will get more personal with “Search Plus Your World.”