Google search changes 22nd November 2008

Posted November 23rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated November 25th, 2008)

While looking at some websites last night for next week's weekly roundup I noticed some changes to Google's search result which have social aspects to them: "promote", "remove" and "comment" buttons. I'm sure I haven't noticed these before so they must have only just gone live in the last day or so.

Note: I mistakenly thought that the SearchWiki function had been taken down and then restored again but I was looking at it on different browsers, and I've since discovered SearchWiki only works if you're logged into Google. Now on with the original post...

The first screenshot below shows my current index page listing in a search results page at Google. I've added three red arrows to show the new buttons. The up arrow button is "promote"; the X is "remove" and the speech bubble one is comment. I think the comment one may have actually been there before and I never really took notice of it, but the other two really stand out which is why I noticed them last night.

Clicking the promote or remove buttons opens up the following floating layer. I haven't tried clicking the continue button yet but it will be something worth looking into over the next few days to see what you can do and what affects it has adding stuff to this wiki.

If you click the comment button a little comments area opens up underneath the search result listing for you to make a comment. As I mentioned above, I think the comments bit might have actually been there before because the little speech bubble button seems familiar so maybe this part isn't actually new.

Since discovering this on Google and writing this post, I have discovered Techcrunch have a post about this titled "Google, It Wasn’t Broke" and there's a blog post in the Official Google Blog about it.