Poll shows many users dislike Google's personalised search results

Having been unveiled last month, Google's personalised search initiative, "Search Plus Your World", has already caused a fair amount of controversy.

Twitter and Facebook have already spoken out against it and according to an article published by TechWeek Europe, a recent poll has found that many prefer standard search results, as opposed to those that have been personalised.

The poll of 400 Americans, carried out by AYTM Market Research, found that 45.4 per cent would rather results produced by Google - a platform popular for search engine marketing initiatives - remained as they were;  meanwhile 39.1 per cent stated that while they welcomed the idea of Search Plus Your World, they remain concerned about their privacy.

Greg Sterling, writing for Search Engine Land, however, has moved to put AYTM's results into perspective.

He states: "It's important to point out that this is just one survey, and it's not clear how representative the survey popular was of the entire US adult population.

"It's also important to observe that people often react negatively to change. However, these results, if they can be generalised, represent a pretty strong negative reaction to the new direction Google is headed."

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