Stars in My Eyes

Recently I started seeing stars on all my Google (News - Alert) search results, and I have to tell you, I am confused. I googled Google stars and got a result that wasn’t starred. Does that mean it isn’t good? While I research, you may be interested in an excerpt from this article, which may clarify what is going on:

Google’s focus on personalized search has led the company to develop a number of useful features promoting an individual user experience. In the next few days, users should see the newest Google search development rolling out, called stars. Current Gmail, Reader, Docs, and News users will recognize the stars feature, which allows them to mark important e-mails, documents, and other content, to find easily at a later time. Because Google has implemented the stars feature in so many of its other apps, extending stars to search results is a natural move. By focusing on personalized search, Google caters to its diverse user base and continues to improve the search experience.

So now if I starred something in Google Reader, will it show up in search as a starred result? I am already seeing results with stars in my results, and I am not sure why. Did a tiny gremlin use my Google account and go on some sort of star-clicking spree?

According to the article, I shouldn’t be confused. Check out the following excerpt – keeping in mind of course this is a non-starred result:

Using stars is simple. An empty star marker will appear next to every search result. Once a result is starred by a user, it appears at the top of the search results the next time the item is googled, under a special “starred results” heading. Users can select multiple results for the topics they search, and recall them later without searching through multiple pages to find what they’re looking for. Essentially, stars is a bookmarking tool specifically for the Google search engine. You’ll no longer need to bookmark a page using your browser – good news for users who have hundreds of bookmarked sites that may disappear with one wrong click. Starred sites will sync with the Google toolbar as well as the bookmarks app, creating a more streamlined user experience.

So wait, now stars are bookmarks? And the experience is somehow streamlined? This is good to hear because I was about to switch to Bing (hmm, I wonder what happened to AltaVista).

You know what is really funny? When I googled AltaVista just now, its URL came back starred. IT

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