Blind Five Year Old is an SEO blog that analyzes Google search changes, authorship markup, personalization and ranking updates.
HN links it for SEO guidance such as implementing rel=author, and commenters use it in talk about Google's search and personalization.
Google does indeed use my data in order to personalize search results. I remember being impressed to see that for a query that could have several different meanings, the search engine gave me results centered on my engineering field, which was what I was looking for.
I am not that convinced that it blindfolds you to some services or opinions though. So far I have only seen differences in understanding the context of the query, which I don't see as an 'undue bias' but an added value (especially if you read the anecdote about the 'history of aviation' query in this thread).
Some other thoughts on the bubble : http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/the-preference-bubble .
I, too, need an identity. But not one controlled by a corporation ultimately responsible to its stockholders. Note three lines of guidance (restated in http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author ) from Google:
> The TL;DR version for implementing rel=”author” is that it requires three specific links.
>> A link from your blog post or article to your author page using rel=”author”
>> A link from your author page to your Google profile page using rel=”me”
>> A link from your Google profile page to your author page using rel=”me”
For what it is worth, Google has favored macro-parasites over micro-parasites. The bigger companies have access to the ears of market regulators, etc. The average small publisher or affiliate site has almost nobody care if it disappears.
Part of the most recent Google update was penalizing high authority trusted sites for publishing off topic content from third parties. There is a concept called "goog enough" explaining how the likes of Forbes ranked for just about everything. https://www.blindfiveyearold.com/its-goog-enough
Eric Schmidt:
The people who built the Internet did not get a stable
version of identity; You need identity, in the sense that
you are a person, this is who you are these are your
friends and so on … The issue on the Internet is not the
lack of Facebook, the issue on the Internet is the lack
of identity.
(from http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/09/eric-schmidt-on-gauging-googles-success/ )
See also http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author .
Exactly if you know who authored a peice of content then you can get a pretty good idea of how authoritative it may be. Google is pretty good about finding content but you want to know that the content is actually good (no content farms) if you know who wrote it then you can get a pretty good idea of how authoritative it may be.
This goes into some more detail about this: http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/google-plus-identity-and-seo
I think he means related searches as in http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/google-related-searches-competitors.png
If I understand his comment, if you select the term "sweatshirt" your add is also displayed when people search "American Eagle," and that may be yourself and you're wasting money.