Filtering google search results

[Kevin Slater]

So this is nerdy beyond belief, but I figure that's what this forum is for, right?

 

I was mildly annoyed that google seemed to be filtering out wikipedia pages from its search results. I used to search, for example, wiki rosemary woods and the first several entries on the results page would be links to wikipedia articles. But in the past few weeks, I'd get links to tons of other sites with wiki in their domain, but specifically not wikipedia. I then noticed that if I log out of gmail and did the search, I'd get the results I expected. Turns out google remembers your searches and tries to give you a result based on what you've been likely to click on in the past. (When did I not click on wikipedia, though?)

 

The remedy was for me to log back into gmail, go to http://www.google.com/history, and click clear entire web history. That still wasn't enough, but once I cleared the google cookies from my browser, they stopped filtering out wikipedia due to some perceived search preference.

 

I told you this was geeky.

 

Kevin Slater

[+ honcho]

Channeling Spock : ``Fascinating ....''

 

Thanks for the info! (And certainly not too geeky for this particular corner of the forum. Had no clue you could reset your google history)