Dear AoIR, I am currently doing a study on the kind of information that Google.com makes visible in relation to the controversy about synthetic biology. In relation to that I need to think about how I will handle the issue of personalized seraches and I therefore have a couple of questions and a little pilot-analysis that I was hoping you could help me out with: a) Can you reccomend any recent studies concerning personalization of serach in Google or about the algorithms of the Google rankings in general? b) I have read that adding “&pws=0” after the URL will de-personalize the search but I am not sure in which way. Do you know what it does and do you know whether I can do anything to keep my IP address and geographical location from influencing the results? c) In order to study to what extent personalization actually effects the rankings I am conducting a little pilot-experiment. If you have 2 minutes to help me with the data-gathering I would be grateful if you would like to follow the instructions below (and perhaps forward it to your contacts). All the best, Anders Koed Madsen --PILOT STUDY-- Dear friends and colleagues, I am currently doing pilot study on the extent to which Google personalizes your search results on the basis of your previous search, your gmail-account, your IP address, your geographical location etc. I therefore want to ask you if you can help me with a little experiment by taking 2 minutes to do the following: a) Open Google.com in your browser & go into ´search settings´ and set your preferences to 20 results pr. page (click off Google instant) b) Search for the exact phrase “synthetic biology” on Google.com - Remember the “” around the words - Do not use other versions of Google such as Google.dk or Google.co.uk c) Drag your marker across the screen and copy the results without the ads to the left and to the right of the results. When you drag your marker across the results it will automatically leave those out. d) Paste the results in a word-document together with the following information - When was the search initiated? (date and time) - In which country, region and city was the search initiated? - Where was the computer located? (e.g at home, library, university etc.) e) Mail the word-document to akm.ioa@cbs.dk Thank you very much for your time. All the best, Anders Koed Madsen PhD stipend, Copenhagen Business School http://uk.cbs.dk/research/departments_centres/institutter/ioa/menu/staff/men... P.S Please forward this mail to your contacts (in as many countries as possible) if you feel like it