26 Oct How To Control Your Social Search Results In Google
Google is big on personalization nowadays. If you are like me and have ever wondered, why is Google showing me this result near the top of my SERPs (search engine results page), and how exactly is Google attributing this social connection to me, then this post should give you some insight. I actually found it rather difficult to get a straight answer from Google as to why certain accounts were affecting my SERPs so I thought I would break it down for our users below.
You might want to keep certain individuals from impacting your search results, as I found myself wanting to do one day. Have an over-sharing cousin in your family that you are connected to through Google contacts? Well, that will show up as a social connection in your search results, whether you like it or not.
According to Google, here’s how you can control your social connections in Google. You have several options to remove a user from influencing your search results in addition to making sure important people are impacting your results:
Add or remove connected social network accounts
Add or remove a user from any social network that is connected to your Google Account
Add or remove users in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
Add or remove a user from Google Contacts
Add or remove a user you are following in Google Reader and Google Buzz (Buzz will be closing soon, however)
Add or remove users who you have allocated into a Google Plus circle
As you can see it is not exactly intuitive to add or remove users from your social connections. However, now that you understand what causes your search results to vary when you are logged in vs not being logged out you should have a good understanding of how to tweak them to your liking.
