Don’t Be Evil Bookmarklet Makes Google’s Social Results Useful

A group of engineers from Facebook, Twitter and MySpace released a “Don’t Be Evil” bookmarklet that tweaks the Google+ integration in Google search results. It displays the most relevant social network for an individual rather than simply promoting Google’s (often less relevant) Google+ page.How the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet works, straight from its creators:

When you search for “cooking” today, Google decides that renowned chef Jamie Oliver is a relevant social result. That makes sense. But rather than linking to Jamie’s Twitter profile, which is updated daily, Google links to his Google+ profile, which was last updated nearly two months ago. Is Google’s relevance algorithm simply misguided?

No. If you search Google for Jamie Oliver directly, his Twitter profile is the first social result that appears. His abandoned Google+ profile doesn’t even appear on the first page of results. When Google’s engineers are allowed to focus purely on relevancy, they get it right.

So that’s what our “bookmarklet” does. It looks at the three places where Google only shows Google+ results and then automatically googles Google to see if Google finds a result more relevant than Google+.

If you really don’t like Google’s inclusion of social results, you can always turn them off, but if you don’t mind the idea, this bookmarklet makes those results useful instead of simply promotional.

To install it, head to Focus on the User, click “Try a More Relevant Google”, and drag the “don’t be evil” bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark toolbar. Next time you perform a search that displays social results, click the bookmarklet for improved social results.

Focus on the User [via parislemon]