I wanted to bring to your attention the continuing demise of the quality of Google Search. This is just not my own opinion but the opinion of some others as well, as illustrated in the articles below. So I am advising you to be more critical using Google Search for your information needs. Why am I emailing you about this? It is our responsibility, as information workers, to be critical of the resources we use for ourselves and our clients and not always assume resources relied upon for years continue to be effective.
Google Search is swinging away from a pure search algorithm (which hasn’t been that great lately anyways due to Google’s “freshening” up their algorithm), to the inclusion of social results related to the topic searched on (Google+). That’s what that +1 means at the end of some of the search results links – Google integrating Google+ results into Google Search. The Google+ tagline is “Google+: real life sharing, rethought for the web.
“What I dislike about Search plus Your World isn’t that Google has more deeply integrated social data on its search results pages. It’s that the search engine has gone overboard with Google+ in a way that makes me feel like I’m being force-fed a new social network. It’s too much, too soon.”
Obviously, I don’t approve of the new changes but I’d love to hear your comments or even a differing opinion!
infophile 