We’ve long believed that personalization makes search more relevant and fun. For nearly five years, Google has been tailoring results with personalized search. They’re announcing a new feature in search that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite web content — stars.
With stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant. That means if you star the official websites for your favorite football teams, you might see those results right at the top of your next search for [nfl]. Here’s what the new “Starred results” feature looks like:
The great thing about stars is that you don’t have to keep track of them. You don’t even have to remember whether or not you starred something. Simply perform a search and you’ll rediscover your starred items right when you need them. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can always see your list of starred items in one place and easily organize them. Even beyond the results page, while browsing the web you can quickly click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, and those pages will start showing up in the new stars feature.
Stars in search replace SearchWiki. In Google’s testing, Google learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but people didn’t like changing the order of Google’s organic search results. With stars, Google has created a lightweight and flexible way for people to mark and rediscover web content. For people who like annotations, they have Sidewiki, a more powerful way for people to contribute and discover helpful information next to pages across the Internet. All your existing SearchWiki edits will be preserved with your Google Account. You can learn more on Google help center.