I agree, I don't believe that over-personalization is an issue. (As I already said in another comment.)
But here's why some people probably don't like personalization: It's invisible. There is nothing on the results page that tells you whether your results are personalized or not. Sure, you can look at whether the browser is in incognito mode or you can look for some parameter in the URL, but these things require that you already know about personalization.
In contrast to personalization there are various indicators that a page is localized. The most prominent is obviously the language of the text. As soon as all the search results are in my local language it is very obvious to me that I got localized search results. I can also detect localization by looking at the Google logo on the homepage (localized versions have the country name in grey text below the Google logo), by looking at the language of the Google interface, by remembering the domain name I used to access Google and by looking at the sidebar on the left that even displays a guess of my location on the city-level.
There are no such indicators at all for filtered/personalized results. Every user around me starts with the same version of Google results. That's how everyone got acquainted with Google in the beginning. Same results for everyone. There is no reason for a user to question that until you see the differences by comparing search results, which most users won't. Someone who doesn't happen to work at Google or didn't hear about the "filter bubble" can't know that search results will start to diverge from vanilla results over time.
So personalized Google results violate the principle of least astonishment.
While I can't speak for other people, I think that the concerns that some people have about this are rooted in the fact that you can get trapped in some sort of feedback loop without ever knowing. If you could see that your results are personalized you could compare them to unpersonalized results and decide for yourself which you like better.
"But here's why some people probably don't like personalization: It's invisible. There is nothing on the results page that tells you whether your results are personalized or not."
Here's a simple demo. Do a search in Chrome incognito mode and go to the bottom of the page. You won't see a link that says "View customizations." Now do a search in regular Chrome and check for that link. When I did a search for [matt cutts] in regular Chrome, I saw the "View customizations" link, clicking the link gives this message:
"Search customization details: matt cutts
When possible, Google will customize your search results based on location and/or recent search activity. Additionally, when you're signed in to your Google Account, you may see even more relevant, useful results based on your web history.
The following information was used to improve your search results for matt cutts:
Web HistoryOne or more items in your Web History were used to improve search results.
Manage Web History
Remove Web History from my Google Account
If you're curious, you can see what a search for matt cutts looks like without these improvements.
The 'More details' link on your search results page can be used to display this page for approximately 30 minutes, after which it will no longer show this page."
In other words, not only can you tell whether a search results page was personalized, you can click a link right on the search results to see exactly what criteria were used to personalize the results. And that page has a clear link to run the search again without personalization.
As I mentioned before, personalization is typically a minor effect in Google's search results and it's almost always an improvement. But for people who are worried about potential "over-personalization," we do provide easy ways to see when a search was personalized, why it was personalized, and do the search again without personalization.
Thank you for the clarification. This comes as a surprise to me. I did not know that.
In my defense, I couldn't know about the "View customizations" link because I do have web history turned off, so apparently I never saw any personalized search results. After reading the DuckDuckGo page I expected that everyone's search results get personalized, especially if I am logged in with a Gmail account.
It's obviously not your fault that I didn't know about that, but, on the other hand, you can never expect from a user to know the contents of any help page. Clicking on "help" links is not what most users do. (imagine smiley face here, I don't dare to do that on Hacker News)
Additionally, I think that the "View customizations" link is a bit misleading, because usually customizations (in terms of software) are not automatic. At least I would expect that customizations are something that I do.
Also, the link seems to be placed at the bottom of the page, which means that 99% of the users are probably blind for it. (I can't verify where it is actually placed, because I don't see it.)
After all, I am thankful for the great search results that Google offers. Thank you for your hard work.
Happy to discuss this, jannes. Your points are well-taken: when we first launched the ability to see why/how results were customized, we added a link at the top-right of the search results (the Search Engine Land article has a snapshot from those days).
But there's another guiding principle that things on the search results page need to "earn" their pixels. Since personalization is a second-order effect and very very few people ever cared enough to click the link and get more info, eventually that link made its way to the bottom of the search results.
I'm sorry, but a "View Customizations" link is nowhere near as clear as a simple statement like "These search results have been personalized." right on top of the search results page, where you can't miss it.
But the real solution is to use a search engine that does not track you. Even better is to use it in such a way that it can't track you (ie. through a Tor proxy, while taking other reasonable precautions).
In case you missed where I said this below, we did launch a message on the top-right of the search results page. The Search Engine Land article had a snapshot, but here's a direct link to what it looked like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/searchengineland/2717951328/
Over time, we saw that people didn't seem to notice/care about the message and corresponding link much, so it eventually migrated down to the bottom of the search results.
It's interesting that the response to people possibly not noticing the link was to make the link less noticeable.
Instead, you could have tried to make it more prominent by (for instance) moving it to the upper left rather than the upper right of the search results, right above/below the ads.
Another issue that might be interesting to explore is to what extent users really understand what search customization is, and whether they'd care more or less about it being done automatically once they understood it better.
I have a feeling the vast majority of them probably wouldn't care, and take the attitude of "do whatever it takes to make the results you return more relevant, and I don't really care how."
If the flickr image is the actual size, then no wonder it was not noticed. No matter how much I customize all my interfaces -- and with the increasing pixel count of displays -- interfaces are constantly populated with immutable 8 point fonts. Any font less than 14 points is fine for 1985 and VGA displays; but not anymore.
After knowing that there was a "View Customizations" link, it took me > 1 minute to find it. It is in the most unintuitive place where 99% of the time I don't even scroll to. Sorry this is in no way advertised.
Google also filters special terms like bittorrent in instant search. This is part of that bubble and people don't even realize it. Thats the point, that most people won't notice, not that the views are not there.
Its like experts-exchange.com putting content below the long footer of the page, yea they can claim its there but many won't notice.
There's also this http://i.imgur.com/PMD5U.png which I hadn't noticed before. I just clicked through DDG's links and it tied guns and Obama for me, pretty cool.
But here's why some people probably don't like personalization: It's invisible. There is nothing on the results page that tells you whether your results are personalized or not. Sure, you can look at whether the browser is in incognito mode or you can look for some parameter in the URL, but these things require that you already know about personalization.
In contrast to personalization there are various indicators that a page is localized. The most prominent is obviously the language of the text. As soon as all the search results are in my local language it is very obvious to me that I got localized search results. I can also detect localization by looking at the Google logo on the homepage (localized versions have the country name in grey text below the Google logo), by looking at the language of the Google interface, by remembering the domain name I used to access Google and by looking at the sidebar on the left that even displays a guess of my location on the city-level.
There are no such indicators at all for filtered/personalized results. Every user around me starts with the same version of Google results. That's how everyone got acquainted with Google in the beginning. Same results for everyone. There is no reason for a user to question that until you see the differences by comparing search results, which most users won't. Someone who doesn't happen to work at Google or didn't hear about the "filter bubble" can't know that search results will start to diverge from vanilla results over time.
So personalized Google results violate the principle of least astonishment.
While I can't speak for other people, I think that the concerns that some people have about this are rooted in the fact that you can get trapped in some sort of feedback loop without ever knowing. If you could see that your results are personalized you could compare them to unpersonalized results and decide for yourself which you like better.