Google has unveiled a new tool which allows users to customise search results and announced it is ending its virtual world experiment, Lively. Google, in a posting on its official blog on Thursday, said a new feature known as SearchWiki allows users to personalise search results by editing them according to their own preferences.
SearchWiki lets users, who have a Google Account rearrange their search results, re-ranking websites by moving them up or down in the results page.
Useless search results can be deleted and others can be added. "With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site," Google said. "You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don't feel belong."
The Mountain View, California-company said the modifications will be shown the next time users log on and will not affect searches done by others.
A video explaining the new feature is online at: googleblog.blogspot.com/ SearchWiki marks the first time that Google, which dominates Internet search with more than 70 percent of all US searches in October according to Hitwise, has allowed users to modify search results. Google also announced in another blog posting that it was killing off Lively (lively.com), a virtual world website similar to Second Life, at the end of December.
"In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways," Google said. "But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off," it added.