Personalize Your Google Search Results With Rankings and Comments: The Newest Feature in Google's Arsenal

Google customization is the newest little perk that this massive search corporation has added to its repertoire. Google's innovators are constantly trying to increase their already huge dominance in the search market, and here's their latest ploy.
In your search results, you will now see small icons depicting an arrow, an X and a speech bubble. These each represent different things you can do.

To begin with, the arrow beside the title of each listing is called the "Promote" button, which allows you to basically put this result at the top of your page. This is great for debate or thesis research because you can place all of the most reliable sources at the top of your page for easy access.

On the other hand, the X, dubbed the "Remove" button lets you demote a website to the bottom of your results. You can employ this as a sort of pop-up blocker, in order to ensure that you ignore web pages with huge amounts of advertisements.
Combined, these two features can be utilised as an alternative to bookmarking on your browser or with such services as del.icio.us (now known as Delicious). So your favorite sites won't only be in a small list but a big list. Namely, the biggest list on the internet, Google.

Now, don't think I forgot about the last symbol, the speech bubble. This, the "Comment" button lets users essentially give public feedback about a listing to help out other searchers.
Lastly, recently Google introduced a one more way to personalize your own results: You can now quickly and easily add a specific URL to your results.
But don't abuse these tools; if you do your searches may soon become inaccurate and messy. Of course, it consumes much time rating and commenting on each individual site so I don't recommend you do that.
Still, what Google has made can be very useful as long as you use it wisely.

5 Reasons Why I Don't Use iGoogle As My Homepage

5. It's too cluttered.

I don't want to come onto the internet every single day looking at a huge jumble of pictures and words. The mess of iGoogle just doesn't appeal to me.

4. iGoogle is overwhelming.

Every time I take a look at my iGoogle page (which I don't do that much any more), I see so many different gadgets that I have to attend to. I don't want to waste my time looking at every unique and extremely alluring thing on iGoogle.

3. You have to constantly browse for gadgets.

If you have nothing better to do, then this is fine. However, I have a life and don't want to be scrolling through the pages and pages of new and "featured" gadgets that would consume me even more.

2. The loading time is a bit too slow.

For the most part, I use Google Search to initiate my surfing and don't wish to be stalled in the middle of some dumb website that I don't have any intention of actually using.

1. You get quickly addicted to iGoogle.

It's hard not to do this because it's sort of intriguing searching for new tools or just admiring the beauty of your little collage. In fact, some people spend quite a bit of time just blissfully observing their artwork. And then there's the themes. And then there's the gadgets.

Why You Don't Need Cuil Search

With a greatly (over)hyped launch, Cuil has hit the world of search engines and is trying to gain market share quickly. One problem; there are hundreds, if not thousands of them already. So basically, what I'm saying is you don't need another search engine: In other words, you don't need Cuil.
To begin with, you obviously can use other renowned and more effective search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live Search.
Each of these websites are much more convenient with several additional search features such as images, video, maps and more (Yahoo! leading the way with pages for music, food and travel).
Also, naturally with the many more pages indexed in Cuil's database, you would get more search results. However, most people aren't going to search engines to look for a lot of things, but a few, relevant items. This is one quality Cuil just doesn't possess enough of. In fact, there is not even as much as a small advanced search tool to help narrow down your results.
Moreover, hand in hand with the thumbnails beside some results, are numerous inappropriate images that really make you question the capability of the Safesearch option.
And of course, how can you forget this little trait that major search engines all have. Simplicity. Cuil's search result page is intensely cluttered, making it hard to appreciate the web content. Here's a cold, hard number; 3. 3 columns doesn't cut it when you want speedy reading.
So although Cuil does have some good potential and considerable aesthetic appeal, it's not something that you want to waste your time on right now.

On My Watchlist: Zoocasa Real Estate Search

Recently, I was surfing and clicked on ad just out of plain curiousity. It led my to Zoocasa, a seemingly new real estate search that runs only in Canada.
When I arrived at the homepage, I found it to be very clean and uncluttered. To add, the design of the page is much like that of Google but it is much more appealing to the eye.
So I decided to try its search system as this was obviously its main component at saw what it could do. As with top real estate search engines, Zoocasa had several customizable features such as price range, number of bedrooms and number of bathrooms as well as the location.
Naturally, my first instinct was to just type "Toronto, Ontario" into the box and not change anything else. This gave me over 5000 different homes on sale, pretty impressive for something just starting out. All of these listings included a price, location, short description and image and were quite organised. Adding to that, you could sort your results to make finding the perfect home even easier.
Another tool that was provided was the research, that displayed average housing prices in Toronto, organized by number of bedrooms as well as an article about the city.
Lastly, if you make an account with them, you can also track areas or homes, which can be helpful with home-buying.
So there are some minor issues such as the slow loading and non-global/continental search but I think Zoocasa will soon expand so put this site on your watchlist too because it might be big one day. You never know.