Google Personalized Search

According to Google, their personalized search algorithms “rely on more than 200 unique signals” to produce search reslits. While not all of these lead toward a filter bubble effect, many do. Some of the items that effect a Google search:

  • People and places and their connections to each other and you
  • Whether or not a mobile device is used
  • Page Rank to decide which websites are best and are more likely to be put on a search
  • Language you speak
  • Country you live in
  • Specific place in country
  • Web history
  • Search history
  • “Query Understanding” to get to “the deeper meaning of the words you type”
If in all your searches for news, you only click on links for Conservative blogs, these blogs will eventually be placed at the top of all your searches, so you do not even see the news from main stream media sources or liberal blogs any more. This does not only apply to news and politics. If you spend all your time searching for tourist destinations and travel information, searching for a place will give you a list of reslits containing tourist information for that place. If your friend Joe spends all his time looking into politics, searching for the same place colid give him a completely different set of reslits, this one showing the latest political news of the place.