Survey shows people don’t want personalised results on Google

Google’s search results have been through the mill a bit recently – largely due to the fact that they decided to prioritise their own social network over others, in their new search ‘Google Plus Your World‘. But for all the talk about improved personalised results, it seems that people might not actually want them after all. In a survey put together to ask whether people wanted their search results personalised based on their social network communities and previous searches, an overwhelming 45% said no, compared to just 15.5% who said they did.

Interestingly, a further 39.1% of respondents said that while they liked the idea of personalised results, they were put off due to privacy concerns. 400 respondents took part in the survey, and the results show that there may be a significant gap between the ‘tech elite’ and the mainstream. While everything in social media world is about increased personalisation, it seems relevancy is still more important than seeing results linked to those in your networks.

Not done well

Of course, a likely conclusion from the survey is that people are claiming they don’t want socialised/personalised search results because they haven’t seen it done well yet. As with every announcement Facebook makes, people think they don’t want it until it arrives and it turns out Facebook knew what they were doing after all. Until someone comes along and does social search well, it’s difficult to imagine how it could extend beyond simply searching within Facebook among your friends, which has been possible for a long time now.

In addition, the survey also revealed that just 7.5% of respondents claimed that personalised results on Google would make them more likely to use Google +. Pretty shocking results for Google, given that everything in their social search plans is hinging on integrating Google +. Without the content there to support it, the search experience will be limited at best, and irrelevant at worst.