Bill Cammack

So, this morning, I decided to Google Bill to see how I was doing. I’ve been struggling recently, because of the Stimulus Bill, which had displaced me to about #12 out of 438,000,000 but I knew this was a flash in the pan and would be old news in a second, and I’d be back in stellar form.

Now, what I didn’t expect was to be page 01, number 01:

This is no big deal, because Google’s been customizing its search results for some time now, so I expect them to know that I’m the one (because I’m logged in to Google) asking who’s the top dog amongst the “Bill”s of the planet and to appease me by saying “Thou art the fairest of them all”.

I got this result from Firefox, so I decided to go for a second opinion and try Safari 3.2.1:

All of a sudden, I was #10 instead of #1. This made more sense to me, however, looking at the two result pages, I noticed that they were measuring two completely different things.

1. Firefox – #1 out of 41,000,000 – Customized for New York metro area, US
2. Safari 3.2.1 – #10 out of 438,000,000 – Personalized based on your web history

So, as a tiebreaker, I decided to download Safari 4. Of course, this isn’t MUCH of a tiebreaker, because it saved my preferences from Safari 3.2.1.

The first thing I noticed about Safari 4 was a way cool “Top Sites” layout:

The idea is to fill the 4×3 grid with your favorite sites for easy access:

So I clicked on the Google page in the top right and did my search for Bill again:

Same result in Safari 4 (naturally) as in Safari 3.2.1. #10 out of 438,000,000 – Personalized based on your web history.

So I checked the “Search Customization Details” and found out what I already suspected:

“When possible, Google will customize your search results based on location and/or recent search activity. Additionally, when you’re signed in to your Google Account, you may see even more relevant, useful results based on your web history”.

So there it is… Depending on how you set up your Google search parameters, you too could be the top dog in your town!

Enjoy! :D

~Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
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