(written by Nic, member of our adcopy team)
What do I want from Google? There is one thing that I have ALWAYS wanted for as long as I can remember and it is a simple little thing.
A RANDOMIZE BUTTON next to search results. Not the crumby “I’m Feeling Lucky” button that makes me think “I‘m Feeling Like Kicking Your…” instead when I search I want to be able to RANDOMIZE my results COMPLETELY. If I am doing research for something I don’t like combing pages and pages of links sorted by Google’s algorithm. To be honest I have little faith in the fact that the results are truly independent. Money makes the world go round and Google’s algorithms wouldn’t want to make a dent in the billions. So you get Google results.
I don’t disagree with this practice, they’re just looking after their own interests, HOWEVER, being able to randomize the results order for the same search phrase not only improves the depth of the current search (you view a variety of results that otherwise gets lost by a sorting algorithm) but also gives the proverbial ‘man on the street’ much more of a chance to show his stuff and I think it would improve research a lot.
I don’t think revenue would be lost as advertisements could still be displayed next to the search results - unless Google is using its algorithms to ’streamline’ the results order for its own financial benefit.
