Google adds stars to search

Personalize your results

4 March 2010 15:07 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Google has made a small change to its search engine, adding the ability for users to "star" certain results for later. The idea is to make your results more personalized, allowing the company to get a better grip on what you're searching for if you enter an ambiguous query.

After you've starred a result, it'll appear at the top in a list of any relevant searches. For example, if you star the results for your favourite websites then they'll show up at the top of any searches you make that are related to topics that they cover. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and Google Toolbar, so you can access and edit the list at any time.

The starring functionality replaces Google's "SearchWiki" tool, which allowed you to move certain websites up and down the rankings manually. Google says: "In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but they didn't like changing the order of Google's organic search results. With stars, we've created a lightweight and flexible way for people to mark and rediscover web content".

Stars will be rolling out over the next few days, and should be available globally. If they're not visible to you, make sure you're signed in, as they won't appear to logged-out users.

Via: googleblog.blogspot.com

Full tags

Software, Websites, Search engines, Google