Another Underwhelming Google Launch

So I woke up this morning, wondering what to write about for SEO chicks this week, and wouldn’t ya know Google has launched yet another thing that no-one needs. Perfect, this post will practically write itself!

The first I knew of Google starred results, was seeing the Search engine land post on the subject, so I did a quick check, and found that I still had search wiki, in fact as of writing this post, I still haven’t been moved over to the new system, and from what I’m hearing, I kind of hope that I get left out of the update all together.

@Seobegincom has been keeping me updated on his initial experiences of stared results for much of the morning, and it seems that Google is continuing it’s trend of giving us things that we never wanted, can’t switch off, and make life more difficult than it was before. So far some of the issues that seem to be appearing are:

  • Google adding things to your google bookmarks, based on search history & auto categorising them
  • Auto bookmarking sites from your public profile
  • In order to prevent it tracking trends you have to turn your history off

This raises so many questions for me, especially as I have over 100 google bookmarks stored, and keeping them organised and findable is hard enough at the best of times, the last thing I want is Google coming in and messing with my system.

Secondly, with social search in place, as well as buzz, is there a risk here that people I’m connected to will see things I have bookmarked…eek, there are things in my bookmarks I do not want the world to see.

I just can’t see the point in this really, I think most of us are more than capable of bookmarking a site if we really want to, do we really need Google deciding what we should bookmark for us? There is little benefit to this over search wiki from what I can see so far, although having not tried it, there is still the chance that I will change my mind.

For now though, I just have to wonder why Google has adopted this throw mud at the wall approach of late, if it’s frustrating and confusing for those of us who spend their lives stalking everything that Google does, I can’t imagine how the less savvy Google account users must see this, or do they just not notice and let Google carry on with whatever they want to do with their accounts? Now there’s a scary thought.

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