Olf's Web Soup

Personalized search is something that we all know Google feels strongly about. Today, the search giant is adding a new feature to help users mark searches: Stars. So when you see search results, you can click to mark a star next to a result that you feel is relevant. The next time you perform a search relevant to a starred item, the result will appear in a special list right at the top of your results.

The feature will be rolled out to users over the next few days and will be available to users who are signed into their Google accounts. Google says that stars will make it it easier for users to remember their favorite results because they don’t have to keep track of them after they star them. Google will essentially do all the heavy lifting by remembering starred items and presenting those results when appropriate. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can access your list of starred items in one place if you’d like to see them. Stars can also be used to mark pages when browsing the web; you can click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, which will show up in your starred items.

Google says that stars in search will replace SearchWiki, a tool which we weren’t very fond of. Searchwiki allowed users to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. Apparently others felt the same way, because Google said that users disliked changing the order of Google’s “organic search results.” Stars appears to be an effort to personalize search results in a simpler way. Google notes that if you have been using SearchWiki, your edits will be preserved with your Google Account.