Weekly Recomender Log

I start the this week exploring the world through the eyes of Google.

Last week I added a new Interesting Items For You gadget to my Humor tab of iGoogle. When I logged in this week, I still didn't have anything recommended but it suggested that I click to setup a new tab just for recommendations - just for me. I felt honored, so I clicked.

I now am the proud owner of a new iGoogle tab called Recommendations. It plans on finding items of interest for me in the following areas:

• Videos
• Pages
• News
• Groups
• Gadgets
  
• Searches

So far, only the "Pages" box has anything in it. It shows me part of a political news blog and asks if I like the recommendation - Yes or No. Sadly, I vote no. I note a link that brings up another snippet, again I vote no. I do this two more times and decide that I better do some searches if I am ever going to see more than fairly random stuff.

I start off the session with only 37 searches and the goal of seeing when the recommender will kick in. I start searching for skin care information. I click a few adds. I refine my search using Google's recommended searches. I Click an ad that takes me to Science Daily's skin care news, which happens to feature several Google ads prominently displayed in the middle of news stories. I click on one of these ads a learn about the science of skin care.

When I make it back to Google and, once again, search for skin care, I find that the top site on the non-advertisement list is my old friend Science Daily - kind of curious behavior.

I went on to search for an elusive vacuum sweeper filter - not available in stores.

I ended the day with 50 searches but still no new recommendations on my Recommendations tab. Then I noticed that the text in the boxes said: "You have no recommended searches for today."

It looks like gratification must be deferred. They update these recommendations daily.