All praise the algorithm; it’s never wrong. However, after some scrutiny, it seems like Google search results are spitting out ads on top of increasingly irrelevant data, much of which users accept as the status quo. To address the decline in trusted search results, the search giant has released a new feature.It allows users to leave notesto annotate and critique search results, similar tothe Community Notesthat are now a regular feature on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
Google’s experimental Search feature is part of an opt-in program brought to users byGoogle’s Search Labs. Should the feature expand, there’s a good chance it willbring more transparency into resultsby adding an authentic human element, which begs the question of why such a feature wasn’t implemented sooner.
The struggle for search result authenticity
Polarized by opposing viewpoints, several social platforms, including Twitter, have turned intopolitical echo chambers. It’s a worrying trend. Are the results produced by the internet’s default search engine beginning to mirror this societal change? The current zeitgeist would suggest this is an in-process change. Of course, change is natural, but such polarized views are not conducive to a healthy and informed user base on Google.
Blind to such issues, Google has become known as the custodian of all knowledge. It’s perceived as an entity, like the Oracle of Delphi, when in truth, its algorithm is programmed by fallible human beings. The great experiment that is simply called “Notes” by Search Labs will open up search results to diverse user interactions. It won’t be perfect, and it may even become ugly at times, but the user-annotated comments and opinions will bring insightful, inclusive understanding to what’s essentially a closed system.
Ironically, with access to every fact in the world, the results generated by Google are being shaped. Spam and corporate toadies areshaping and filtering information. As highlighted by reading the last link, there are claims of multibillion-dollar dealings going on behind the scenes. If people really can’t trust the search results they access every single day from their smartphones and computers, then we really are living in a big biased echo chamber.
A transparency-based solution using annotated interactivity
With the addition of crowdsourcing, the legitimacy of Search results, ideally, recipes will be updated and improved, and trips to faraway destinations will receive words of warning regarding expensive hotels and deceptive promotional tactics. More importantly, misleading results will be highlighted, corrected, or swiftly dealt with by way of human review. Hopefully, through interactivity and community sharing, the spam levels and corporate interference levels will drop, and the search environment will experience a resurgence in popularity as honest discourse flourishes.
It’s perhaps a rose-tinted aspiration, but with so many search engine devotees relying on Reddit and Quora for that human element, a more open and overtly collaborative search engine could gain significant traction. Again, not all users are wired the same. Polarizing viewpoints will still cause sparks to fly, but at least they’rereal and honest. Full disclosure: the human race and all its many flaws would test the patience of a saint, but that’s the cost of transparency, of representing the many, not the few, not the elite or the corporate shills. It’s not perfect, not by any description, but user interactivity could be the breath of fresh air needed to reinvigorate a stale search landscape.
Musings on the nature of the Google’s new Search Labs feature
After all is said and done, Notes in Search is a bold addition to Google’s search results. But is this a step towards a less natural browsing experience? People respond to other people more naturally than they react to faceless information dumps, even though they’ve been pared down to a single block of text. Better yet, there’s no behind-the-scenes information manipulation when folk are openly involved, comparing and swapping notes.
In all likelihood, Google’s Notes experiment could foster a new and inviting style of engagement. But if Google is serious about its community-based notes feature, it needs to hop over to YouTube or Twitter to see how very “social” the comments section can become on these platforms. Things can, shall we say, get out of hand when the comments fly, so some moderation of Notes is advised, at least during the course of its experimental phase. The last thing we need is trolls ruining Notes before it gets off the ground.
Notes, done right, give Search results a human face. Hopefully, they’ll also wash away the bad taste left by big business ruining SEO for the little guy. Collectively overcoming conglomerate greed with the push of a button isn’t socialism; it is just a very human, crowdsourced response to the negative consequences of an unchecked market economy.
